ArticlePathogens (Basel, Switzerland)2023
Value of Verbal Autopsy in a Fragile Setting: Reported versus Estimated Community Deaths Associated with COVID-19, Banadir, Somalia.
Article in Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland), 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Accuracy of the Verbal Autopsy questionnaire in the diagnosis of COVID-19 deaths in a Brazilian capital.Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de Sao Paulo · 2024Article
- The importance of community health workers as frontline responders during the COVID-19 pandemic, Somalia, 2020-2021.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
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11 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundAccurate mortality data associated with infectious diseases such as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) are often unavailable in countries with fragile health systems such as Somalia. We compared officially reported COVID-19 deaths in Somalia with COVID-19 deaths estimated using verbal autopsy.
methodsWe interviewed relatives of deceased persons to collect information on symptoms, cause, and place of death. We compared these data with officially reported data and estimated the positive and negative predictive values of verbal autopsy.
resultsWe identified 530 deaths during March-October 2020. We classified 176 (33.2%) as probable COVID-19 deaths. Most deaths (78.5%; 416/530) occurred at home and 144 (34.6%) of these were attributed to COVID-19. The positive predictive value of verbal autopsy was lower for home deaths (22.3%; 95% CI: 15.7-30.1%) than for hospital deaths (32.3%; 95% CI: 16.7-51.4%). The negative predictive value was higher: 97.8% (95% CI: 95.0-99.3%) for home deaths and 98.4% (95% CI: 91.5-100%) for hospital deaths. Conclusions Verbal autopsy has acceptable predictive value to estimate COVID-19 deaths where disease prevalence is high and can provide data on the COVID-19 burden in countries with low testing and weak mortality surveillance where home deaths may be missed.
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