ArticleGlobal health action2015
Local perceptions of causes of death in rural South Africa: a comparison of perceived and verbal autopsy causes of death.
Article in Global health action, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Validating the diagnostic accuracy of medical certification: a population-level comparison between verbal autopsy and Saudi medical records causes of death of deceased with type 2 diabetes.Global health action · 2024Article
- Article
- Community perception of causes of death using verbal autopsy for diabetes mellitus in Saudi Arabia.PLOS global public health · 2023Article
- Perceptions of child death in Jigawa State, Nigeria: a mixed-methods study on how sociocultural nuances shape paediatric mortality reporting.Global health action · 2022Article
- Causes and contributing factors of maternal mortality in Bosaso District of Somalia. A retrospective study of 30 cases using a Verbal Autopsy approach.Global health action · 2019Article
- Effects of recall time on cause-of-death findings using verbal autopsy: empirical evidence from rural South Africa.Emerging themes in epidemiology · 2016Article
- Moving from medical to health systems classifications of deaths: extending verbal autopsy to collect information on the circumstances of mortality.Global health research and policy · 2016Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundUnderstanding how lay people perceive the causes of mortality and their associated risk factors is important for public health. In resource-limited settings, where verbal autopsy (VA) is used as the most expedient method of determining cause of death, it is important to understand how pre-existing concepts of cause of death among VA-informants may influence their VA-responses and the consequential impact on cause of death assessment. This study describes the agreement between VA-derived causes of death and informant-perceived causes and associated influential factors, which also reflects lay health literacy in this setting.
methodUsing 20 years of VA data (n=11,228) from the Agincourt Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) site in rural South Africa, we explored the agreement between the causes of death perceived by the VA-informants and those assigned by the automated Inter-VA tool. Kappa statistics and concordance correlation coefficients were applied to measure agreement at individual and population levels, respectively. Multivariable regression models were used to explore factors associated with recognised lay perceptions of causes of mortality.
resultsAgreement between informant-perceived and VA-derived causes of death at the individual level was limited, but varied substantially by cause of death. However, agreement at the population level, comparing cause-specific mortality fractions was higher, with the notable exception of bewitchment as a cause. More recent deaths, those in adults aged 15-49 years, deaths outside the home, and those associated with external causes showed higher concordance with InterVA.
conclusionOverall, informant perception of causes of death was limited, but depended on informant characteristics and causes of death, and to some extent involved non-biomedical constructs. Understanding discordance between perceived and recognised causes of death is important for public health planning; low community understanding of causes of death may be detrimental to public health. These findings also illustrate the importance of using rigorous and standardised VA methods rather than relying on informants' reported causes of death.
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