ArticleBMJ global health2021
Who dies where? Estimating the percentage of deaths that occur at home.
Article in BMJ global health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Do Mobile Phone Surveys Supplement Other Mortality Surveillance Methods? Results From a National Study in Bangladesh.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2026Article
- Accessing and Administering Anticipatory Medications for Community End-of-Life Symptom Control: A Qualitative Focus Group Study.Journal of clinical nursing · 2026Article
- Quality of Medical Certification of Cause of Death in a City of Assam.Indian journal of community medicine : official publication of Indian Association of Preventive & Social Medicine · 2026Article
- Provision of palliative and end-of-life care by community health nurses: A scoping review on the challenges and potential solutions.International journal of nursing studies advances · 2026Review
- Hidden work and blurred boundaries: a qualitative study of how community nurses navigate and adapt injectable medication processes to provide timely end-of-life symptom control.BMC palliative care · 2026Article
- Trends in place of death in Peru, 2017-2024: a nationwide analysis.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Article
- A comparison of verbal autopsy assignment methods to obtain adult cause-specific mortality in two longitudinal studies in Rakai and Kalungu districts of South Central, Uganda.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Place of death for people with dementia: A scoping review.PloS one · 2026Article
- Turning toward mortality: yoga'sFrontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Computer assisted verbal autopsy: comparing large language models to physicians for assigning causes to 6939 deaths in Sierra Leone from 2019-2022.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Structural, economic, and socio-cultural barriers to birth and death registration in Iran: a qualitative study.International journal for equity in health · 2025Article
- Exploring the Various Sources of Mortality Estimation in Ghana: A Scoping Review of Data Sources, Challenges, and Opportunities.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Determining the cause of death through mortality surveillance using verbal autopsy in Karachi, Pakistan.Journal of global health · 2025Article
- Caring toward end of life through acute hospital and community partnerships: A scoping review.Palliative medicine · 2025Article
- What are our options for mortality data collection and how can they provide HIV-specific information?Journal of public health in Africa · 2025Review
- Registry study of cardiovascular death in Sweden 2013-2019: Home as place of death and specialized palliative care are the preserve of a minority.International journal of cardiology. Cardiovascular risk and prevention · 2024Article
- The rise of home death in the COVID-19 pandemic: a population-based study of death certificate data for adults from 32 countries, 2012-2021.EClinicalMedicine · 2024Article
- EOLinPLACE: an international research project to reform the way dying places are classified and understood.Palliative care and social practice · 2024Article
- Ethical and cultural implications for conducting verbal autopsies in South and Southeast Asia: a qualitative study.BMJ global health · 2023Article
- Assessing the policy utility of routine mortality statistics: a global classification of countries.Bulletin of the World Health Organization · 2023Article
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Abstract
introductionThe majority of low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) have incomplete death registration systems and so the proportion of deaths that occur at home (ie, home death percentage) is generally unknown. However, home death percentage is important to estimate population-level causes of death from integration of data of deaths at home (verbal autopsies) and in hospitals (medical certification), and to monitor completeness of death notification and verbal autopsy data collection systems. This study proposes a method to estimate home death percentage using data readily available at the national and subnational level.
methodsData on place of death from 152 country-years in 49 countries from 2005 to 2019, predominantly from vital registration systems, were used to model home death percentage standardised for population age and cause distribution. A national-level model was developed using Bayesian model averaging to estimate national, regional and global home death percentage. A subnational-level model was also developed and assessed in populations where alternative data on home death percentage were available.
resultsGlobally, it is estimated that 53.4% (95% uncertainty interval (UI) 50.8%-55.9%) of deaths occur at home, slightly higher (59.7%, 95% UI 56.5%-62.7%) in LMICs, substantially higher in low-income countries (79.5%, 95% UI 77.3%-81.5%) and much lower (27.3%, 95% UI 25.2%-29.6%) in high-income countries. Countries with the highest home death percentage are mostly found in South, East and Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (above 90% in Ethiopia, Chad and South Sudan). As expected, the national model has smaller error than the subnational model.
conclusionThe study demonstrates substantial diversity in the location of deaths in LMICs and fills a significant gap in knowledge about where people die, given its importance for health systems and policies. The high proportion of deaths in LMICs that occur at home reinforces the need for routine verbal autopsy to determine the causes of death.
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