Improving the Policy Utility of Cause of Death Statistics in Sri Lanka: An Empirical Investigation of Causes of Out-of-Hospital Deaths Using Automated Verbal Autopsy Methods.

ABSTRACT: Background: Setting public health policies and effectively monitoring the impact of health interventions requires accurate, timely and complete cause of death (CoD) data for populations. In Sri Lanka, almost half of all deaths occur outside hospitals, with questionable diagnostic accuracy, thus limiting their information content for policy. Objectives: To ascertain whether SmartVA is applicable in improving the specificity of cause of death data for out-of-hospital deaths in Sri Lanka, and hence enhance the value of these routinely collected data for informing public policy debates. Methods: SmartVA was applied to 2610 VAs collected between January 2017 and March 2019 in 22 health-unit-areas clustered in six districts. Around 350 community-health-workers and 50 supervi

SUBMITTER: Mikkelsen L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8187752 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature