Improving the identification of multiple causes of death in the absence of death certificates

Health developments represent a challenge for healthcare systems and public policy alike. High-income countries developed the multiplecauses-of-death approach, which takes into account all the causes entered on the death certificate, as a way to capture the high prevalence of multimorbidity in adult mortality. This approach has shown that health statistics based on the main cause of death underestimate the contribution of infectious diseases to the mortality of the elderly. What is the situation then in low- and middle-income countries without death certificates? A study conducted by the French National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), with AFD funding, sets out to answer this question.