Unintentional Injury Mortality in India, 2005: Nationally Representative Mortality Survey of 1.1 Million Homes

Abstract

Background: Unintentional injuries are an important cause of death in India. However, no reliable nationally representative estimates of unintentional injury deaths are available. Thus, we examined unintentional injury deaths in a nationally representative mortality survey. Methods: Trained field staff interviewed a living relative of those who had died during 2001-03. The verbal autopsy reports were sent to two of the130 trained physicians, who independently assigned an ICD-10 code to each death. Discrepancies were resolved through reconciliation and adjudication. Proportionate cause specific mortality was used to produce national unintentional injury mortality estimates based on United Nations population and death estimates. Results: In 2005, unintentional injury caused 648 000 deaths (7% of all deaths; 58/100 000 population). Unintentional injury mortality rates were higher among males than females, and in rural versus urban areas. Road traffic injuries (185 000 deaths; 29% of all unintentional injury deaths), falls (160 000 deaths, 25%) and drowning (73 000 deaths, 11%) were the three leading causes of unintentional injury mortality, with fire-related injury causing 5% of these deaths. The highest unintentional mortality rates were in those aged 70years or older (410/100 000).

Patterns of injury mechanism at a tertiary trauma center in Mumbai, India: Opportunities for injury prevention

“…Other sources of data about trauma epidemiology in India include regionally aggregated data from police reports that are reported by the National Crime Records Bureau (2013) and reports from community-based surveys and verbal autopsies (Hsiao et al, 2013;Jagnoor et al, 2011;Jagnoor et al, 2012). These sources also highlighted the burden RTIs among young men and the importance of pedestrian safety (Hsiao et al, 2013;National Crime Records Bureau, 2013).…”

The quality of police data on RTC fatalities in India

“…The SRS monitors births and deaths in a nationally representative sample of 1.1 million households in India 31. The most recent causes of death from SRS are available for deaths that occurred between 2001 and 2003, and RTC accounted for an estimated 2% of all deaths in India 2 32 33…”

“…Data on the proportion of deaths due to unintentional injury and RTC by major geographic regions from the SRS were available for 2001–2003,31 32 as were all-cause death rates 32 35 36. Using the all-cause death rates and the proportion of RTC deaths of all deaths, we estimated the total number of RTC deaths in India between 2001 and 2003 using mid-year population totals.…”

“…Population totals were obtained by applying the average exponential growth rate for 2001–2011 as estimated by the Census of 2011 to the population totals from the Census of 2001 37. NCRB data for 2001–2003 on the total number of RTC deaths, deaths by sex and by geographic region were compared with the estimates from the SRS 32. NCRB and MoRTH data on RTC deaths were also compared with the more recent GBD estimates of total RTC deaths, by mode of travel, and by sex for the years 2005 and 2010 8…”

Childhood Injury an Icebergof Phenomenon

“…The MCCD, SCD and NCRB are not representative of India's all population. The limitations of these surveys are the small sample size, data were not collected from the most reliable sources and the classification of death was not done in a systematic way (18). The national level study conducted on the basis of verbal autopsy has directly identifieda total of 82,000 unintentional injury deaths in India in 2005.This includes a representation of 9% of death among the age of 1-4 years, 3% of deaths among children below the age of 5 years, 1% of death among children of the age below 1 year.…”