Figure 7.

Availability and quality of cause of death data in the GBD 2015 database

(A) Total deaths with a WHO-standard death certificate available in the GBD 2015 cause of death database classified by the variant of the International Classification of Diseases used for reporting. Cause of death data have been reported in national variants of ICD-8, ICD-9, and ICD-10 during the interval 1980–2015. Because of lags in reporting of both vital registration data and the release of household survey or census data, the availability of data was much lower for 2014 than for previous years and no data existed for 2015. (B) Percentage of global population covered by cause-specific data in the cause of death database for GBD 2015, 1980–2015; the percentage of available data was calculated by dividing the population of locations covered by available cause-specific data by the total global population. This figure is computed using vital registration, verbal autopsy, maternal, cancer, and injury sources. (C) Overall classification of each GBD subnational level 1 geography by availability and quality of cause of death data for the period 1980 to 2015. Countries have been assigned on the basis of the available time series of data into one of six categories. The figure uses GBD subnational level 1 geographies because subnational level 2 cannot be easily seen on a map. Extensive complete representative vital registration was defined as 25 total years or more of vital registration data with an estimated 95% completeness or above. All geographies that do not meet the threshold for extensive complete representative vital registration are classified as one of the following: limited years of complete representative vital registration, defined as 5 years or more of vital registration data with an estimated 95% completeness or above; incomplete representative vital registration, defined as at least 1 year of vital registration data with an estimated 70% completeness or above; more than 200 cause-years VA or non-representative VR, defined as more than 200 cause-years of verbal autopsy or at least 1 year of vital registration with an estimated 50% completeness or above; less than 200 cause-years of VA; or no data. Cause-years are defined as the number of years for each cause for which data are available. GBD=Global Burden of Disease. ICD=International Classification of Diseases. BTL=basic tabulation list. VA=verbal autopsy. VR=vital registration. ATG=Antigua and Barbuda. VCT=Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. LCA=Saint Lucia. TTO=Trinidad and Tobago. TLS=Timor-Leste. FSM=Federated States of Micronesia.