Role of Mortality data  in

Public Health

 

Uses of mortality statistics - These include

a. Health planning and administration

  • Prioritize investments in control and research
  • Evaluate control programmes
  • Improve health care delivery and quality
  • Investigate role of risk factors
  • Investigate impact of interventions

b. Health Research -Monitor trends in mortality and diseases

Users of mortality statistics include

  1. Clinicians

  2. Community health physicians

  3. Epidemiologists

  4. Social scientists

  5. Biostatisticians/Demographers/ Medical records personnel

  6. Programme managers

  7. Policy-makers

Reporting of Cause of death

Only about 1 in 5 deaths in India have a cause of death identified for them

Sources of CoD data

CoD data is obtained through -

  1. Civil Registration systems (CRS)

  2. Sample Registration systems (SRS)

  3. Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD)

 

 

 

1. Civil Registration systems (CRS)

  • It is a passive system comprising of registration of all births and deaths by the government 

  • Data is collected by non-medical personnel

  • Aim: mainly for statistical purposes by registering the fact of death (and not the cause of death)

  • Status report in India –

    • Sample is incomplete and non-representative since only ~5.5 out of 10 lakh estimated deaths are reported per year

2. Sample Registration systems (SRS)

  • This is a subset of CRS wherein from ~7500 small representative geographic areas of the country the fact of death and the cause of death data are collected for a sample size of ~0.5 lakhs/year

  • It comprises of enumeration of deaths in sample villages / urban areas

  • It includes investigation of causes of mortality through verbal autopsy by trained non-medical personnel

  • Aim: for statistical purposes to assign a cause-of-death

  • Status report in India –

    • This system generates reliable community-based information on death rates as well as the causes of death by age-and-sex groups for the country as a whole and for different regions of India 

3. Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD)

  • This is hospital-based certification of deaths by physicians

  • Aim: It is used both for patient-oriented quality improvement and for statistical purposes

  • Status report in India –

    • It is non-representative since only ~1.5 out of 10 lakh deaths are certified per year; suffers from incomplete and inaccurate reporting of causes of death in hospital certificates

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