Iranian Journal of

Background and Objectives: Due to the importance of mortality statistics for planning, setting priorities and equal allocation of health services in population it is essential to assess quality of reporting mortality data in health systems. The aim of this study was to evaluate the completeness and accuracy of the Iranian Vital Horoscope reports for maternal and the under-five mortality (U5M) in rural areas through its comparison with other data sources in Iran.
Methods: The mortality data of Vital Horoscope reported from 30 selected cities over country was compared with the related data obtained from other data sources including Vital Horoscope's Fieldwork reports, Death Registration System and Maternal Mortality Surveillance System of Ministry of Health and Medical Education.
Results: Overall completeness of Vital Horoscope's Fieldwork reports for U5M in rural areas was about % 62.1. In terms of cause of death in children under-five,estimated sensitivity values were % 47.2 (95% CI: 22.9-72.2), % 66.6(95% CI: 22.7-95.7),  %78.2 (95% CI: 64.3-89.3)for respiratory infections, diarrhea and vomiting, and injuries-burning and poisoning respectively. The vital horoscope reports had 12.5% misclassification in determining the cause of maternal death.
Conclusion: Our findings indicate the Vital Horoscope's data might need some corrections because of underestimating of the mortality indicators. The comparison of this source with Death Registration System report for causes of death in children under-five (reported by Vital Horoscope) suggests that the vital horoscope might have suboptimal quality.

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Background and Objectives: Due to the importance of mortality statistics for planning, setting priorities and equal allocation of health services in population it is essential to assess quality of reporting mortality data in health systems. The aim of this study was to evaluate the completeness and accuracy of the Iranian Vital Horoscope reports for maternal and the under-five mortality (U5M) in rural areas through its comparison with other data sources in Iran.

 Methods: The mortality data of Vital Horoscope reported from 30 selected cities over country was compared with the related data obtained from other data sources including Vital Horoscope's Fieldwork reports, Death Registration System and Maternal Mortality Surveillance System of Ministry of Health and Medical Education.

 Results: Overall completeness of Vital Horoscope's Fieldwork reports for U5M in rural areas was about % 62.1. In terms of cause of death in children under-five,estimated sensitivity values were % 47.2 (95% CI: 22.9-72.2), % 66.6(95% CI: 22.7-95.7), %78.2 (95% CI: 64.3-89.3)for respiratory infections, diarrhea and vomiting, and injuries-burning and poisoning respectively. The vital horoscope reports had 12.5% misclassification in determining the cause of maternal death.

 Conclusion: Our findings indicate the Vital Horoscope's data might need some corrections because of underestimating of the mortality indicators. The comparison of this source with Death Registration System report for causes of death in children under-five (reported by Vital Horoscope) suggests that the vital horoscope might have suboptimal quality.

Background & Objectives: This study was conducted to evaluate the completeness and geographical representativeness of the hepatitis B surveillance system between 2007 and 2013 in Hamadan Province.

Methods: In this descriptive study, all reported cases in Hamadan Province were extracted. The analytical literature review method was used to examine completeness. We used studies on the prevalence and incidence of hepatitis in Iran published between 2007 and 2013. Sensitivity analysis of the results was performed by simulation program using the R software. Geographical representativeness was assessed and plotted by the ArcGIS software, as well.

Results: Totally, 1378 cases were reported to the hepatitis B surveillance system in Hamadan Province. Most cases were from urban areas and were men, married, and housewives mostly in the age group 20 to 29 and 30 to 39 years. Completeness of the hepatitis B surveillance system was 77%. The hepatitis B surveillance system was not representative in terms of occupation but was representative in terms of age, sex, marital status, and place of living.

Conclusion: We concluded that the hepatitis B surveillance system had a relatively good performance. Moreover, findings of the analytical literature review method are affected by the included studies and interpretation of the results should be performed with caution.

Background and Objectives: completeness of registration is used as one of the measures of the quality of a cancer registry, which is the degree to which reportable incident cases of cancer in the population of interest is actually recorded in the registry.

Methods: After removing the duplicates, a total of 471 new cases of esophagus cancer reported by three sources of pathology reports, medical records, and death certificates to Ardabil Province Cancer Registry Center in 2006 and 2008 were enrolled in the study. The incidence rate was estimated based on the capture-recapture method and the use of the log-linear models. BIC, G2 and Akaike statistics were used to select the best-fit model.

Results: In this study, a model with linkage between pathology reports and medical records and a model with death certificates alone, independent of the previous two sources, was the best fitted model. The estimated total completeness of esophagus cancer in 2006 and 2008 was 36% .The source that had the most completeness for esophagus cancers was pathology reports with 21.17%. The estimated incidence rate calculated by the log-linear method for the years 2006 and 2008 was 49.71 and 53.87 per 100,000 population, respectively.

Conclusion: Based on the obtained results, it can be concluded that the low degree of completeness in Ardabil Province requires some changes in data abstracting and case finding such as the use of personal national code and electronic health records to create a more accurate cancer registry.