Study on the quality and coverage of death certification in a district of Sri Lanka.

Abstract

This study investigated some important aspects of quality and coverage of death certification in a predominantly rural district. Another objective of the study was to test the effectiveness of an intervention program aimed at improving the quality of death certification. Findings indicated that the recording of data on causes of death by the registrars of births and deaths was not satisfactory due to incompleteness in recording sociodemographic characteristics of the decedent. The overall coverage of death registration was only 72.5 per cent, while the percentage of registration of infant deaths was much lower ie.28.6 per cent. There appear to be a lack of proper coordination between the systems of collection of data, related to mortality and the potential use of such data for the development of health sciences and health related research. The knowledge and practices of responsible officers on death certification at different levels need to be improved by concerted efforts. Documents used in the collection of data need to be revised and the legal procedures of death registration need restructuring with a view to obtaining more reliable and accurate mortality data, which could be used meaningfully in health planning and epidemiological research