Verbal Autopsy Model Development in Ubon Ratchathani 2007-2010 - การพัฒนารูปแบบการสันนิษฐานสาเหตุการตาย จังหวัดอุบลราชธานี ปี 2550 - 2553

Abstract

      Eventhough Thailand has adopted the ICD-10 to its death certificate, it was found that more than one-third (38%) of documented causes of death did not comply with the ICD-10 principles particularly those related to aging, hypoxia and respiratory failure. This study, therefore, was aimed at developing a model to hypothesize cause of death in Ubon Ratchathani Province using interviews, known as “Verbal Autopsy (VA)” and to train human resources to obtain and report accurate cause of death.

        This action research was carried out all over the province in the following processes: 1) trained human resources of all health centers 2)assigned health personnel to investigate cause of death using VA 3) inquired for an approval from the Bureau of Central Registration, and 4) evaluated VA measure and analysed causes of death.

       The study could train human resources of all health centers. With the 81.24 percent quality of measure, the causes of death analysis showed that VA resulted in a 15.14 percent reduction of the non-classified group in 2009 as compared to 40.96 percent in 2003. The causes of death found to affect noticeable changes included those of diabetes, hypertension, and cancer.

         This study showed that the VA can improve causes of death reporting on death certificates. Moreover, health personnel at health centers could obtain quality data suggesting that adopting this model would improve cause of death data in Thailand.

Key words: verbal autopsy, model development, mortality rate, Ubon Ratchathani