Causes of death among adults in northern Ethiopia: Evidence from verbal autopsy data in health and demographic surveillance system

Abstract

Background: In countries where registration of vital events is lacking and the proportion of people who die at home without medical care is high, verbal autopsy is used to determine and estimate causes of death. Methods: We conducted 723 verbal autopsy interviews of adult (15 years of age and above) deaths from September 2009 to January 2013. Trained physicians interpreted the collected verbal autopsy data, and assigned causes of death according to the international classification of diseases (ICD-10). We did analysis of specific as well as broad causes of death (i.e. non-communicable diseases, communicable diseases and external causes of death) by sex and age using Stata version 11.1. We pe..