Estimating Child Death from Perinatal Originating Conditions and Congenital Malformations in Thailand

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine the correctness of reported causes of deaths in children and estimate deaths from perinatal originating conditions (ICD-10, chapter block P) and congenital malformations (ICD-10, chapter block Q) in Thailand. The subset of Thai deaths of children under 5 years old (149 from a total of 9964 deaths) in a 2005 Verbal Autopsy (VA) study was selected as a sample; the data from 1996 - 2009 were used as the target population for this study. Three different logistic regression models were conducted for 3 outcomes of interest: deaths from Perinatal Originating Conditions (POC), deaths from Congenital Malformations (CM) and from other causes including the effects of province, sex and the location of death. This study found no difference in the probability of dying from the POC and CM by sex and province. As expected, the study found significant differences in reporting the correct causes of death inside and outside the hospital. Nearly 90 % of deaths from both POC and CM that occurred in hospital were reported correctly. In contrast, only 60 and 70 %, of these causes of deaths that occurred outside hospital were reported correctly. The number of child deaths from POC in the 14 year period was estimated at 36,838 and from CM was estimated at 26,806. These estimations of deaths from POC are 1.49 times more and from CM are 2.18 times higher than the reported numbers.