verbal/social autopsy [VASA] child mortality inquiry to investigate under-five mortality determinants in slums of Karachi, Pakistan: a mix methods interventional study

ABSTRACT

Background Pakistan stands along top ten countries responsible for two-third of global child mortality burden. To improve Child Mortality [CM] estimates in Pakistan, there is an exigent need to understand the in-depth reasoning behind mortalities. In Pakistan, the data on cause-of-death [CoD] for a large number of child mortalities in Pakistan is either not available or not suitable for use. Pakistan uses an alternative technique called Verbal autopsy [VA]. Since VA only determines the biological cause of death [BCoD], and does not capture multitude of other modifiable social, cultural and health system determinants, it has a limited importance. Such non-biological determinants are captured by another technique i.e. Social Autopsy [SA]