Completeness and Quality of Kumasi (Ghana) Mortuary Dataset

Authors: Kavi Bhalla, Jerry P Abraham and Adofo Koranteng

Date: July 7, 2010

Objective: To do a crude test of the completeness and quality of the Kumasi mortuary dataset

Method: The number of deaths in the mortuary records was compared with an estimate of the number of deaths expected in the Kumasi metropolitan area

Findings:

- The quality of cause of death attribution of the dataset is high with a relatively small number of deaths assigned to unspecified causes.

- The completeness of the database is high (approximately 65%).

Background

- Data Source Analyzed: Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) mortuary records. The dataset contained records for two years, 2005 and 2006, but no year variable was available. Thus the aggregated data has been used here.

- Analysis in this report should be repeated once better data on urban mortality in Ghana is available:

o The analysis in this report uses crude estimates of population and mortality in Ghana. Typically these have been extrapolated from estimates available for the country in international databases. Accurate data for population and mortality in urban Ghana should be available from the 2010 Census. This analysis should be updated when these estimates are available.

- This mortuary database only contains injury cases.

Table 1: External cause distribution of deaths in the KATH-Kumasi mortuary dataset (Two years of data: 2005 & 2006)

Assessment of Quality of Injury Coding

· The quality of cause of death attribution in the dataset is high with relatively few cases assigned to partially-specified or unspecified cause categories.

o 5% of all injuries are not further specified

o The mechanism for homicide deaths is not known

Assessment of Completeness

· Coverage: It is assumed that the mortuary receives cases only from Kumasi. Thus, the injury deaths in the mortuary are compared with total estimated injury deaths in the city.

· Age aggregation: The assessment focuses on deaths among young adults aged between 15-59 years. This was done to reduce uncertainty in this analysis. (Injuries occur primarily among young adults and the high mortality among children and older adults can add substantial uncertainty to analysis)

· Table 2 shows that the completeness of the mortuary data set is high (approximately 65%)

TABLE 2: Assessment of completeness of the KATH-mortuary dataset