With BIS 2.3 there are delivery reports and read reports. However, I've found they are hit and miss. The receipient has to allow read receipts to be sent.

To turn it on go to Messages >Options >Email Settings. Change the Message Service to the account desired and set "confirm Delivery" and "confirm read" to yes. You can also set "send read receipts" to yes as well. Again, this came with BIS 2.3 but I haven't used it on the older BB's with 4.0 and 4.1 OS like the 7290's.