2012 Quetelet Seminar--Adult Mortality and Morbidity
December 5-7, 2012 Research Centre in Population and Societies, Catholic University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Numerous demographic studies have been focusing on mortality and range from analysis of age-specific mortality to cause-of-death analysis or risks factors analysis. In countries with a long statistical tradition, mortality levels by sex, age and cause of death are easily obtained. Epidemiologists as well as demographers took interest in identifying risks factors and markers by age, sex and cause. Although these factors and markers remain the same for morbidities and the resulting mortality, little is known about morbidity levels, be it in terms of prevalence or incidence, except for pathologies that are recorded in specific registrars or for which large surveys are conducted. In countries with incomplete demographic data, both mortality and morbidity are little or badly documented except when subjected to specific surveys such as under-5 mortality or, to a lesser extent, morbidity. The need for medical diagnosis and assessment of severity of illness makes morbidity data collection especially challenging. Morbidity data collection is especially challenging as it involves. In addition, in armed conflict, post-conflict or natural disaster situations, evaluating the number of victims is crucial to assess needs as well as to ease the reconciliation process.
The 2012 Quetelet Seminar will focus on adult age morbidity and mortality analysis from the data collection and measurement perspective. It will be organised in collaboration with the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (UCL-CRED/WHO) and International Network for the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH). Communications will cover existing or in-the-making tools for data collection and measurement that serve to estimate adult-age morbidity levels in countries with good-level statistical data and adult-age morbidity and mortality levels in countries with incomplete data. Particular attention will be devoted to papers that deal with estimating mortality and morbidity in crisis or post-crisis time.
The 2012 Quetelet Seminar will be organised along the following three axes:
1. Morbidity Analysis
What are the existing data collection and measurement tools to estimate incidence and prevalence of diseases, including chronic diseases? What are their limits?
What morbidity data collection and registration tools are most effective? What are the most reliable data to collect for the measurement of functional and cognitive abilities in a population so as to evaluate dependency ratios? What health monitoring systems should be developed to detect and prevent infectious disease?
2. Adult mortality in countries where data are incomplete
What are the latest developments in the estimation of adult mortality in countries where civil registration data are incomplete or non-existent? How has adult mortality changed recently in developing countries, more than three decades after the onset of the HIV epidemic and in a context of increased access to antiretroviral treatment? Beyond mortality levels, how are inequalities in adult mortality analysed (by sex, according to educational or poverty levels)? What are the lessons to be learned from demographic surveillance sites, particularly in terms of causes of death, as reflected by verbal autopsies and associated tools?
3. Demographic impacts of armed conflicts and natural disasters
What impact armed conflicts and natural disasters have on adult morbidity and mortality? How is this impact measured? What different forms of resilience develop and how are they captured? What early warning systems can be put in place to limit the impact of disasters?
