Causes of Death and Social Determinants

The data visualizations below summarize causes of death determined by verbal autopsy analyses of deaths for neonates, children under 5 years, children 5-14 years, adults 15-49 years, and adults aged 50 years and above. The data cover deaths occurred in the past 12 months and will be updated on a monthly basis. Given the continuous nature of COMSA surveillance, these data can be expected to vary from one month to another.

Calibrated Ensemble Method:

Verbal autopsy interviews collect signs and symptoms information that are analyzed by physician review or by computer automated methods to determine causes of death. The automated methods include InterVA-5, InSilicoVA, Tariff-2, and Expert Algorithm VA (EAVA). COMSA implements only the automated methods and has developed innovative techniques that refine the VA analysis results of each automated method through calibration using pathology-based causes of death data paired with VA data in a separate sample collected by the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Project (CHAMPS). The techniques produce calibrated VA results for each automated method separately and cross-method Ensemble results for neonatal and child (1-59 month) deaths. We show that the calibrated VA results of each individual computer automated method and the  calibrated Ensemble VA results are an improvement over the individual uncalibrated results (see Fiksel et al. 2020).   

The results below summarize causes specific mortality fractions (CSMF) for children 1-59 months old, based on the Ensemble calibrated method, which incorporates calibrated results from InterVA-5, InSilicoVA and EAVA methods. We propose that these results are used at national level. Disaggregated results by province, sex, and place of residence are forthcoming.