Measurement of overall and cause-specific mortality in infants and children: memorandum from a WHO/UNICEF meeting.

A joint WHO/UNICEF informal consultation on the "Measurement of overall and cause-specific mortality in infants and children" was held in Geneva on 15-17 December 1992. The participants included physicians, demographers, statisticians and programme personnel from different regions. The recommendations were aimed at helping countries and international organizations to produce more frequent and more reliable data on overall child mortality and to estimate broad patterns of child mortality by cause of death, especially for ranking the major causes of death and monitoring progress towards the achievement of mortality reduction goals of the World Summit for Children. The verbal autopsy method was reviewed to assess its potential for use in different situations--surveys, longitudinal surveillance, health services and civil registration--and its capacity to provide national estimates of cause of death. Documented national and international experiences and validation studies were examined together with other methods already being used. The potential of the preceding birth technique and other indirect methods to estimate mortality in childhood--for use by countries and programmes more frequently and with as much disaggregation as possible--was evaluated.