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This article presents the fourth installment on a series called "Who Counts?" which looks at the barriers to getting citizen statistics in developing nations. The lack of citizen registration greatly hampers the measurement of medical intervention effectiveness in poor countries. The global community has failed to provide the technical and economic support needed to create reporting systems in these countries. The authors admit there is no one system that will work for every country but says there are things that can be done to start the systems and generate better vital statistics than are available in 2007.

This article presents the second is a series called "Who Counts?" which looks at the huge number of unregistered people around the world and how that impacts medical interventions, financial allotments and human rights. Vital statistics such as recording births and deaths are useful if they are of good quality. In this article, the authors propose a framework for the assessment of the quality of vital statistics and look at the gathering of information in developing countries in 2007. The authors argue that vital statistics should be considered public goods and are a key element for measuring health improvement.