ABSTRACT
Twenty-three of the world’s 192 countries have high-quality death registration data and 75 have no cause-specific mortality data at all. Verbal autopsy (VA), an alternative method for collecting mortality data, enables investigators to establish the cause of death retrospectively. VA carries information on circumstances, events, signs, and symptoms of illness experienced by the deceased before death. It can ascertain the leading causes of death, reduce the misclassification of causes, reduce the proportion of adult (age 25 or older) deaths attributed to unspecified or unknown causes (from 54% to 23% in urban areas and from 41% to 26% in rural areas). A study was undertaken in a urban slum of Ludhiana, to find the cause specific mortality of adult deaths and get an insight into the mortality pattern of this sample population.