Decreased under-registration, which reached 8.9%, the lowest level in the series, allows utilization of birth data in direct calculations of health and demographic indicators.

With the reduced under-registration of births in Brazil, which reached the lowest level of the series (8.9%) according to Civil Registry Statistics 2008 (released in November of last year), the improvement of birth registration coverage was evidenced in the whole country. According to the Inter-Agency Health Information Network (Ripsa), this level would be enough for the use of birth information in direct calculations of health and demographic indicators. Thus, other pieces of information are also necessary. One of them is the proportion of year registrations whose time elapsed between birth and registration date was, at most, 90 days, as determined by Law 6015/73.

Considering data from 2008, the federation units with the lowest proportions of registrations in the 90-day term were: Acre (77.0%), Maranhão (78.1%) and Pará (79.2%). The highest proportions were from São Paulo (98.9%) and Santa Catarina (98.7%) (Graph 2).

This difference informs how many births occurred in health establishments, in at least 90 days, and were not lodged in registry offices. It was a difference of 127,612, deducting the totals from Rondônia (594), Minas Gerais (2945), Espírito Santo (570) and Goiás (160), what would raise the figure to 131,945 births.

Even in the federation units whose total civil registries was higher than that of Sinasc, analysed information considering smaller areas, such as microregions, show totals superior to the system administered by the Ministry of Health for certain areas. This situation is confirmed especially by late registries, compiled by Civil Registry Statistics in subsequent years.

Major differences existed in Pará (30143), Maranhão (19127) and Rio de Janeiro (18327). The largest proportions were found in Pará, Amazonas and Maranhão, respectively with 25%, 19.5% and 18% (Table 2). The result from the state of Rio de Janeiro is significant, because information on birth registrations in this federation unit has a wide coverage.

In 2008, in Brazil, 2,789,820 births were registered. There was an increase of 1.4%, or 38,984 more registrations than in 2007. Data, by dwelling place of the mother, reveal increased birth registrations in the whole country, with highlights being Amapá (11.3%), Mato Grosso do Sul (9.5%) and Roraima (6.5%). There were decreases in relation to the previous year, in Rio de Janeiro (-2.2%), Rondônia (-0.4%) and Piauí (-0.3%) (Table 1).

 It is important to know the evolution of birth registrations year by year, as well as its difference in relation to totals in the Live-Birth Information System (Sinasc), of the Ministry of Health, which decreased considerably (Graph 1).