title: Availability and quality of cause-of-death data for estimating the global burden of injuries.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the availability and quality of global death registration data used for estimating injury mortality.
  
  
  METHODS
  The completeness and coverage of recent national death registration data from the World Health Organization mortality database were assessed. The quality of data on a specific cause of injury death was judged high if fewer than 20% of deaths were attributed to any of several partially specified causes of injury, such as "unspecified unintentional injury".
  
  
  RESULTS
  Recent death registration data were available for 83 countries, comprising 28% of the global population. They included most high-income countries, most countries in Latin America and several in central Asia and the Caribbean. Categories commonly used for partially specified external causes of injury resulting in death included "undetermined intent," "unspecified mechanism of unintentional injury," "unspecified road injury" and "unspecified mechanism of homicide". Only 20 countries had high-quality data. Nevertheless, because the partially specified categories do contain some information about injury mechanisms, reliable estimates of deaths due to specific external causes of injury, such as road injury, suicide and homicide, could be derived for many more countries.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Only 20 countries had high-quality death registration data that could be used for estimating injury mortality because injury deaths were frequently classified using imprecise partially specified categories. Analytical methods that can derive national estimates of injury mortality from alternative data sources are needed for countries without reliable death registration systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard School of Public Health, 718 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, United States of America. kavi_bhalla@harvard.edu
authors.forename: Kavi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bhalla
authors.forename: James E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Harrison
authors.forename: Saeid
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shahraz
authors.forename: Lois A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Fingerhut
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000401:mortality / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D002423:Cause of Death; D016208:Databases, Factual; D003906:Developing Countries; D014943:Global Health; D006708:Homicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011634:Public Health / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012042:Registries / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012107:Research Design / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013405:Suicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014947:Wounds and Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000401:mortality*