ReviewThe Pan African medical journal2019
Validation of verbal autopsy methods for assessment of child mortality in sub-Saharan Africa and the policy implication: a rapid review.
Review in The Pan African medical journal, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Validation of malaria-attributed deaths using verbal autopsy studies: a systematic review.Malaria journal · 2024Pooled it
- High epilepsy prevalence and excess mortality in onchocerciasis-endemic counties of South Sudan: A call for integrated interventions.PLoS neglected tropical diseases · 2025Article
- Burden of hemoglobinopathies and hemolytic anemias in the World Health Organization African region, 2000-2021: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease 2021 study.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Are all tuberculosis deaths correctly attributed due to tuberculosis? Analysis of causes of death (COD) using verbal autopsy: A cross-sectional study in Puducherry.Journal of family medicine and primary care · 2025Article
- What are our options for mortality data collection and how can they provide HIV-specific information?Journal of public health in Africa · 2025Review
- Comparison of causes of stillbirth and child deaths as determined by verbal autopsy and minimally invasive tissue sampling.PLOS global public health · 2024Article
- Population cause of death estimation using verbal autopsy methods in large-scale field trials of maternal and child health: lessons learned from a 20-year research collaboration in Central Ghana.Emerging themes in epidemiology · 2023Article
- Verbal autopsy analysis of childhood deaths in rural Gambia.PloS one · 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
- Validity of InterVA model versus physician review of verbal autopsy for tracking tuberculosis-related mortality in Ethiopia.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- Methodology to Determine Cause of Death for Stillbirths and Neonatal Deaths Using Automated Case Reports and a Cause-of-Death Panel.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2021Article
- Learning to Listen.Pediatrics · 2021Article
- An assessment of non-communicable disease mortality among adults in Eastern Uganda, 2010-2016.PloS one · 2021Article
- Nicotinic Receptors in the Brainstem Ascending Arousal System in SIDS With Analysis of Pre-natal Exposures to Maternal Smoking and Alcohol in High-Risk Populations of the Safe Passage Study.Frontiers in neurology · 2021Article
- Perception of Autopsy among Selected Healthcare Workers at a Tertiary Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone- A Cross-Sectional Study.Nigerian medical journal : journal of the Nigeria Medical AssociationArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Reliable data on the cause of child death is the cornerstone for evidence-informed health policy making towards improving child health outcomes. Unfortunately, accurate data on cause of death is essentially lacking in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa due to the widespread absence of functional Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) systems. To address this problem, verbal autopsy (VA) has gained prominence as a strategy for obtaining Cause of Death (COD) information in populations where CRVS are absent. This study reviewed publications that investigated the validation of VA methods for assessment of COD. A MEDLINE PubMed search was undertaken in June 2018 for studies published in English that investigated the validation of VA methods in sub-Saharan Africa from 1990-2018. Of the 17 studies identified, 9 fulfilled the study inclusion criteria from which additional five relevant studies were found by reviewing their references. The result showed that Physician-Certified Verbal Autopsy (PCVA) was the most widely used VA method. Validation studies comparing PCVA to hospital records, expert algorithm and InterVA demonstrated mixed and highly varied outcomes. The accuracy and reliability of the VA methods depended on level of healthcare the respondents have access to and the knowledge of the physicians on the local disease aetiology and epidemiology. As the countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to battle with dysfunctional CRVS system, VA will remain the only viable option for the supply of child mortality data necessary for policy making.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.