Factors Related to Ethnic Inequalities in Accessing Health Services and Child Registration in Honduras

This article examines the relationship between access to health services and birth registration in Honduras, highlighting how increased healthcare coverage can reduce under-registration of births. In January 2014, the Ministry of Health and the Civil Registry implemented a hospital registration system, whose main action was the installation of civil registry offices in public maternity wards across the country to ensure the immediate registration of newborns. A statistical model was applied to the population census of 2015 to analyze the factors associated with the under-registration, complemented with interviews with government officials about the main barriers in the process of registering children. Despite persistent challenges in the health system, by 2019, 94% of births took place in institutional settings, but only 50% of newborns were registered at this stage. This is due to various barriers limiting access to civil registry, mainly in health services in maternity wards, as well as other ethnic-racial and rural barriers, which underscores the need for more inclusive public policies to ensure universal access to birth registration.