A new dataset that provides insight into individual deaths in Africa and Asia has been released by INDEPTH Network.
The data, which has been published in a special issue of the Global Health Action journal, provides a strong case for the value of recording cause of death for planning and improving public health services. It also shows high variability in cause of death across sites, particularly in deaths caused by endemic diseases such as malaria and HIV.
More than 110,000 individual deaths and their causes across 13 countries, including Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Bangladesh and Vietnam, are contained in the new INDEPTH dataset.
Funding
The INDEPTH project was substantially funded by the Hewlett Foundation (USA), Sida/Research Cooperation Unit (Sweden) and the Wellcome Trust (UK).
From its Secretariat in Accra, Ghana, the INDEPTH serves as an umbrella organisation for 52 Health and Demographic Surveillance System (HDSS) sites in 20 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, each following individuals in defined populations on a continuous basis.
Data collected by researchers
The data, collected by hundreds of researchers over two decades, are the first meaningful community-based information about cause of death in countries where individual deaths are not recorded automatically by national governments.
“It pleases me to note that our own scientists have conducted the research, generated, cleaned and analysed the data, and have written the papers in this journal. Together with these publications, we are making the datasets freely and widely accessible to the public on the INDEPTH Data Repository, www.indepth-ishare.org.
This INDEPTH approach confirms that if scientists from low, and middle-income countries are funded to be able to analyse their data and publish their work, they will unquestionably make their data publicly available,” said Prof. Osman Sankoh, the Executive Director of the INDEPTH Network.
Dodowa and Navrongo health research centres
Dodowa and Navrongo Health Research Centres of the Ghana Health Service contributed to the research. The results show that infections, non-communicable diseases and neoplasms contributed to most of the deaths reported by the two centres during the study periods.
There are other important specific findings from the dataset. Across the countries, the data show consistently high rates of maternal and childhood mortality. Childhood drowning in Bangladesh and homicide among adult males in eastern and southern Africa are other causes for concern. Mortality from non-communicable diseases, particularly in younger adulthood, is an emerging problem, accounting for a high proportion of deaths in Asian countries.
