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The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) has launched the Birth De­fects Repos­i­to­ry in the Amer­i­c­as, an in­ter­ac­tive plat­form that con­sol­i­dates re­al-time da­ta on con­gen­i­tal anom­alies re­port­ed by na­tion­al epi­demi­o­log­i­cal sur­veil­lance sys­tems in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

PA­HO said on Wednes­day that the tool aims to “strength­en ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and sup­port the de­vel­op­ment of poli­cies and strate­gies to im­prove ma­ter­nal and child health.”

PA­HO said each year, about 15 mil­lion chil­dren are born in the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, with 10 mil­lion of them in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.