Sources of Morbidity and Mortality Data

Sources of Morbidity and Mortality Data

• Primary Data: Collected directly by the investigator for their specific study objectives.

  • Data comes from surveys, interviews, tests, and examinations performed on subjects.
  • Aims to determine if participants meet criteria for a particular disease.
  • Examples: blood tests, diagnostic procedures, and community health assessments.

• Secondary Data: Collected by other researchers for different purposes, potentially useful for current investigations.

  • Data already exists from previous studies, often uncontrolled by the current investigator.
  • May lack specific focus, control over data collection or data classification.
  • Data quality may be affected by how it was initially collected.
  • Examples: HIV/AIDS registry data from a treatment centre.

Summary of Abbreviations

• RA: Republic Act
• RHU: Rural Health Units
• CHO: City Health Offices
• PHO: Provincial Health Offices
• MHO: Municipal Health Offices
• ICD: International Classification of Diseases

Learning Objectives

• Identify various sources of morbidity and mortality data.
• Complete public documents relating to vital records.
• Determine public health indices.

Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events

• Republic Act 11332 mandated reporting of notifiable diseases.
• Surveillance and monitoring of communicable diseases is crucial.
• Reporting typically occurs weekly.
• Data collection happens at different levels, from RHUs to municipality health offices.

Civil Registries of Vital Events

• Includes continuous, compulsory record-keeping of vital events (i.e. birth, death).
• Provides critical data for legal and statistical uses.
• A Certificate of Death records details of an individual's death.
  • Essential documentation for claims, inheritance, and insurance benefits.
  • Helps determine cause and circumstances of death.
• Special considerations for fetal deaths and deaths involving external injuries

Quarantine vs. Isolation

• Quarantine: Separates and restricts movement of well persons previously exposed to a communicable disease.
• Isolation: Separates ill persons with communicable diseases from the healthy.

Emerging and Re-emerging Infectious Diseases

• Diseases that have not occurred in humans before, either recently recognised or have re-emerged.
• Can be caused by new infectious agents or mutated organisms.
• Crucial to monitor and understand these diseases for public health response.

Notifiable Diseases

• Several disease/syndromes categorized as immediately or weekly notifiable.

Civil Registries and Vital Events

• Accurate record-keeping of various vital events is crucial for epidemiological studies.
  • This allows for the tracking of occurrences of specific diseases, conditions and also conditions related to disease.
• Recording is often mandatory and is completed in specific, standardized forms.

Certificate of Death

• Crucial for accurate recording of causes of death.
• Includes necessary data on causes of death, medical information and time information
• Accurate information used to track patterns and trends in mortality.

Ill-Defined and Non-Specific Causes of Death

• Ill-defined conditions are vague and less useful for epidemiological studies
  • Often lack specific details on cause.
  • Should not be used as underlying causes on certificates of death.

Fetal Death

• Death prior to complete expulsion of a pregnancy product.
• For fetuses 20 weeks and older, different forms must be completed

Death from Infectious Diseases

• Critical to identify the specific site of a neoplasm when reporting deaths from cancer.
• Essential for developing preventative strategies.
  • Important for the effective implementation of epidemiological research and investigations.

Death Under Medico-Legal Examination


• Reporting procedure for suspected cases of violence or crime related deaths.
• Crucial for legal purposes and investigations.
  • Includes identifying injuries and the circumstances surrounding the death.

Death from Neoplasms

• Identifying primary sites for effective preventative strategies.

Death Involving External Injuries


• Report the external cause as the underlying cause.
• Important for understanding patterns of injury-related mortality
  • Identify the specific event that triggered the fatal condition.

Deaths of Filipino Muslim/Indigenous People

• Permits burial without a death certificate if reported within 48 hours to local authorities.
  • Appropriate documentation required in accordance with relevant Filipino policies for Muslim and Indigenous people.

Paternity Issues


• Important distinction between legitimate, illegitimate and legitimated children.
  • Children's rights, inheritance, and registration are addressed in different ways based on the child's parentage

Obstetrical and Gynecological codes

• Gravidity and Parity, determining the stages of pregnancy
• Early, Full, Late, Post-term pregnancies

Review Questions

• Focuses on distinguishing different kinds of data and their implications for epidemiological studies.