The high-level Commission on Information and Accountability for Women’s and Children’s Health included among its 10 recommendations one that is specific to improving measurement of maternal (and child) deaths. This recommendation requires that “by 2015, all countries have taken significant steps to establish a system for registration of births, deaths and causes of death, and have well-functioning health information systems that combine data from facilities, administrative sources and surveys”. Considering that only a third of countries are characterized as having a complete civil registration system with good attribution of cause of death, it is imperative that countries with incomplete civil registration systems take steps to strengthen those systems. This will tremendously improve the estimation of maternal mortality and monitoring of the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5: Improve maternal health. The two targets for assessing MDG 5 are reducing the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) by three quarters between 1990 and 2015, and achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015.