|
Abstract:
|
In areas without complete-coverage civil registration and vital statistics systems there is uncertainty about even the most basic demographic indicators. In such areas the majority of deaths occur outside hospitals and are not recorded. Worldwide, fewer than one-third of deaths are assigned a cause, with the least information available from the most impoverished nations. In populations like this, assessing the rate and distribution of deaths related to HIV/AIDS is especially challenging. This paper develops a new statistical tool to classify cause of death using information acquired through verbal autopsy surveys. Our method shares uncertainty between cause of death assignments for specific individuals and the population cause of death distribution. Using side-by-side comparisons with both observed and simulated data, we demonstrate that our method has distinct advantages compared to currently available methods.
|
