Evaluation of the Current Documentation of Death Certificates in the Gaza Strip
Date
2011-07-13
Authors
Jawad Jaber Badwan
جواد جابر سلامة بدوان
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Al-Quds University
Abstract
Death certificates represent a data source that many health researchers find useful
and attractive for analysis. It is an official document that declares a person is died,
how we document the death certificate affect our mortality statistics which are very
important. Public health policies depend heavily on the mortality indicators derived
from death certificates. Because they are the main source of information about the
causes of death and illness preceding death. This study aimed to evaluate the current
documentation of death certificates in the Gaza Strip.
Triangulated cross sectional quantitative, qualitative study was conducted in order to
evaluate the current documentation of death certificates in the Gaza Strip. The
instrument used in this study were reviewing death notification certificates through
self constructed checklist and in-depth interview with 12 managers. Total of 256
death notification certificates from 1-7-2009 to 31-12-2009 were chosen through
systematic sampling method and Epi info program. 0ut of them, 237 death notification
certificates were detective, so the detective rate was 92.5%.
The study findings show that for reporting of original city, 28.7% was incomplete and
37% of birth dates were improperly reported. For occupation and addresses 56% and
67.9% respectively were incomplete. For data relating to death hour and if the baby
live less than 24 hours, missing of these data were 19% and 97% of the certificates
respectively. The findings of the study revealed that 38% of the cause of death is not
documented completely nor accurately, 100% of the certificates did not mention if the
deceased was pregnant or not at time of death, 10.5% of certificates were not certified
by physician completely and 11.8% of PHC registration was incomplete. Finally
results show that our physicians are not trained, but familial by experience on how to
complete death notification certificate and the mortality and morbidity committees
within hospital are not active.
The researcher concluded that there is a serious problem regarding the
documentation of death notification certificates in the Gaza Strip in personal and
demographic section, cause of death section, certifying physician section and PHC
governorate certification section. And that due to lack of formal training, medical
inexperience and perceived lack of certificate importance.
The researcher recommended that continuous training for physician on the proper
way of completing death notification certificate, reactivation of mortality and
morbidity committees within hospitals and initiating of professional committee in the
MOH responsible for querying cause of death could help in promoting better and
more accurate documentation of death certificates. Also the researcher recommended
for further study to investigate the effect of good documentation of death certificates
on mortality statistics and health status of the population.