This document discusses vital statistics which are numerical records used to study health and growth in communities. It defines various vital events like birth rate, death rate, and sickness rate. It then explains the importance of vital statistics in describing community health, developing health policies, and planning disease control measures. Various sources of vital information are provided like census, registration of events, and hospital/health records. Key vital events like maternal mortality, infant mortality, fertility rates are defined. Formulas for calculating various rates are also presented.