Cause-of-Death data in public health planning – an overview

It is well known that more than half of the world's deaths pass by undocumented as to cause¹. Whilst the appropriate focus of health services may well be the care of the living, consistent and reliable cause-of-death data also constitute a crucial and major resource for health planning and prioritization, and their lack in many settings is a major concern towards filling these data gaps^2,3.