Investigation of ill-defined causes of death: assessment of a program's performance in a State from the Northeastern region of Brazil

Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia

Abreu, Daisy Xavier de²  Escalante, Juan José Cortez¹  Cunha, Carolina Cândida da⁵  Vasconcelos, Ana Maria Nogales³  Lima, Raquel Barbosa de¹  França, Elisabeth Barboza²  Morais Neto, Otaliba Libânio de⁴ 

[1] Ministério da Saúde, Brasília, Brasil;Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil;Universidade de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil;Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brazil;Instituto Federal Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil

关键词: Health evaluation;    Information systems;    Vital statistics;    Mortality;    Cause of death;    UnderregistrationINTRODUCTIONFor consolidating the Brazilian Unified Health System an essential aspect refers to the development and management of health information systems (HIS);   

DOI  :  10.1590/1415-790X201400010010ENG

学科分类：过敏症与临床免疫学

来源: SciELO

【 摘 要 】

OBJECTIVE: The proportion of ill-defined causes of death (IDCD) was persistently high in some regions of Brazil in 2004. In 2005, the Brazilian government implemented a project in order to decrease this proportion, especially in higher priority states and municipalities. This study aimed to evaluate the performance of this project in Alagoas - a state from the Northeast region of Brazil. METHOD: We selected a probabilistic sample of 18 municipalities. For all IDCD identified in 2010, we collected the verbal autopsy (VA) questionnaires used for home investigation, and the Ministry of Health (MoH) form, which contains information about the final disease and cause of death taken from hospital records, autopsies, family health teams, and civil registry office records. The completion rate of the MoH form and VA was calculated using the number of deaths with specific causes assigned among investigated deaths. RESULTS: A total of 681 IDCD were recorded in 2010 in the sample, of which 26% had a MoH and/or VA3 forms completed. Although the majority of cases were attended by health professionals during the terminal disease, the completion rate was 45% using the MoH form and 80% when VA was performed. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide evidence that the training of the epidemiological surveillance teams in the investigation and certification of causes of death could contribute to improve the quality of mortality data.

【 授权许可】

Unknown