Early Report on the Availability of Island Wide Twin Data in the Central Birth Registration Department

Population based twin registers are not common outside Scandinavia, particularly in the developing world. Sri Lanka has a 98% accuracy of birth registration. However only since 1992 these records have been computerized at the Central Birth Registration Department including the details of the twin births. These details are complete only up to 1997.

We scrutinised those computerized records for the year 1992, to look into the feasibility of using it to obtain a twin database. A total of 3189 twins were identified out of 356,842 births registered at the at the Registrar General Department for the year 1992, giving a twining rate of 8.93 per 1000 registered births. Higher numbers of twins were registered from major urban centers where the Teaching, Maternal, General, Provincial and Base hospitals are situated. This finding was consistent for the whole country. It was evident that there is a large population based twin database for the whole country from 1992–1997. 1998–2000 data is not yet computerised. To obtain a cohort of twins since birth was a possibility provided that there was a facility to get all the prospective births from now onwards. Support of the statutory services was thus requested and was granted. Therefore all prospective twin births will be directly reported to the Twin Registry, at the time of birth registration. This prospective birth cohort for the whole country will be available for many different projects in the future.