Digest
News
A running digest on verbal autopsy and cause-of-death data — new publications, field updates and methodological notes, in chronological order, newest first.
What we track: updates to the WHO verbal autopsy instrument, research on the InterVA model and other algorithmic methods, openVA tooling, and mortality surveillance in the field — from Health and Demographic Surveillance Sites to national verbal autopsy surveys and CRVS strengthening programs.
Every entry is grounded in primary material — WHO publications, peer-reviewed journals and official project pages — with sources listed at the foot of the article. This digest is an independent observatory: it is not affiliated with the InterVA project team, Umeå University or WHO, and links to official tools always point to their original sources.
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The Certificate Says Sepsis. The Chart Says Kidney Failure.
Two audits of physician-written death records — 25,123 certificates in the Islamic Republic of Iran and 365 adjudicated intensive-care deaths in India — both find that what gets written is often the terminal event, not the condition that set the chain in motion.
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Three of Fourteen: How Death Notification Found Uganda's Sudan Virus Cases
In Uganda's 2025 Sudan virus disease outbreak, three of the fourteen cases entered the surveillance system through a death alert — including the index case, confirmed after death. An operational review published in September describes how mortality surveillance worked; a 2025 assessment of Uganda's routine death reporting shows how much of the country's mortality still runs past the desk.
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The Deaths Outside the Register: A National Phone Survey Tests Bangladesh's Mortality Coverage
A nationwide mobile phone survey in Bangladesh recorded 1,527 household deaths and asked where each one happened and where the body was buried — finding that roughly a third of urban deaths and half of rural ones would sit outside facility- or cemetery-based surveillance. A methods study, and its authors are explicit about what it cannot yet prove.
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Five Billion People, One Molecule: What the Oxygen Gap Looks Like From a Mortality Desk
The Lancet Global Health Commission counts five billion people without reliable access to medical oxygen, and the gap maps almost exactly onto the regions where verbal autopsy carries cause-of-death statistics. From a fingertip pulse oximeter to a pressurized chamber, one molecule traces the full range of what health systems can deliver.
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281 and 104: The Same Mothers, Counted Two Ways in Tanzania
A 27-year verbal autopsy series in one Tanzanian surveillance site puts maternal mortality at 281 deaths per 100,000 live births for 2015–2022; the national survey implies 104. A WHO Bulletin paper proposes four cheap checks for the facility data in between — and finds plenty of implausible numbers.
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Africa's Mortality Is Turning Chronic, Faster Than Its Death Records Can Follow
A GBD 2023 analysis counts 4.7 million non-communicable disease deaths in Africa in a single year — a burden whose estimate leans on verbal autopsy precisely because so many of these deaths are never medically certified.
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The Count Before the Cause: A New Surveillance Ledger in North-East Nigeria
A baseline profile of the Bauchi health and demographic surveillance site — 151,672 people, 23,476 households — is a reminder that verbal autopsy can only assign a cause to a death somebody first recorded.
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After the Clinic Door: Sierra Leone's Cohort Puts a Number on Post-Discharge Deaths
A Lancet Global Health cohort followed 20,560 infants in three Sierra Leone districts and classified community deaths with the WHO verbal autopsy tool and InSilicoVA — while the facility side used clinical records. The split between the two routes is as informative as the causes themselves.
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Seven Countries on How to Teach a Doctor to Write a Cause of Death
A qualitative study in Global Health Action interviewed health officials in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sri Lanka and Tanzania about embedding medical certification training in medical schools and licensing — the physician-written track that runs alongside verbal autopsy.
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Verbal Autopsy and Drowning: One Study Out of 11,457
A scoping review in Injury Prevention screened 11,457 records and found just nine verbal autopsy studies on drowning in low- and middle-income countries — and only one that recorded the circumstances of the death.
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Zambia's Mobile Death Reporting Reaches One Death in Six
A six-month evaluation of electronic death notification across four Zambian provinces found completeness rose from 11.9% to 17.4% and reporting delays halved — while a parallel verbal autopsy programme, coded with InterVA-5, still supplies causes for deaths that never reach the register.
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When Only Some Deaths Get a Verified Cause: Verbal Autopsy Meets Verification Bias
A statistical framework from the University of California, Santa Cruz treats the way deaths get selected for verification as part of the model — then tests itself on 411,491 suspected COVID-19 deaths recorded in Brazil's severe respiratory illness surveillance.
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Introducing the News Digest: Verbal Autopsy and Cause-of-Death Data
Why we are launching this digest, what it will track — WHO instrument updates, InterVA model research, CRVS field work — and how entries are sourced.
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Pakistan Counted 115,600 Households to Learn What Kills Its Children
A national verbal and social autopsy survey reconstructed causes of death for thousands of stillbirths, maternal deaths and child deaths across Pakistan — running four different coding methods in parallel.
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A Tissue Sample and a Grieving Interview, Side by Side in 8,500 Child Deaths
Seven countries, nine years, 8,500 deaths investigated with postmortem sampling: a CDC-led surveillance report shows how much of a child's death a household interview can and cannot account for.
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A 30-Minute Verbal Autopsy: A Kolkata Team Cuts the Questionnaire to 61 Questions
An abridged version of the WHO verbal autopsy instrument — 61 questions or fewer per age group instead of hundreds — agreed with hospital diagnoses in 80% of 270 deaths, in a single-city pilot validation in Kolkata.
