Identifying the causes of deaths

by the method of interview

at Epidemiological Field Laboratory of Bavi

Dao Lan Huong, Hoang Van Minh, Peter Byass

Master thesis in public health

Umea University, Sweden, 2001

Objectives: To evaluate the application of VA for diagnosis of mortal causes for all the cases at Fila Bavi, Vietnam in 1999 and attempt to analyze mortal patterns.

Methods: Surveyors were trained to interview the relatives of dead people using VA questionnaires with both open and closed questions.

Findings: Mortal causes have been found for the total of 189 cases using VA method. Two doctors gave diagnosis separately, the agreement rate is 0,84 (kappar test), after that there was a comparison to identify the most possible cause for each case. The leading cause of mortality is cardiovascular diseases and infectious diseases (accounting for 20,6% and 17,7%). Drowning is the most common cause of death for children under 15 years of age (7/9 cases).

Conclusion: Diagnosis by two doctors was suitable, however, the possibility of developing diagnosis tree should be considered in order to improve agreement, especially when monitoring the mortal pattern over time. Although the exactness of VA should be studied further, this can be seen as a suitable method to identify mortal causes in the researched area and can be applied o­n a larger scale.

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