Use in Health Care
Early recording of mortality rate in European cities proved highly useful in controlling the plague and other major epidemics. Public health in industrialized countries was transformed when mortality rate as a function of age, sex and socioeconomic status emerged in the late 19th and 20th centuries. This track record has led to the argument that inexpensive recording of vital statistics in developing countries may become the most effective means to improve global health. Gathering official morality statistics can be very difficult in developing countries, where many individuals lack the ability or knowledge to report incidences of death to National Vital Statistics Registries. This can lead to distortion in mortality statistics and a wrongful assessment of overall health. Studies conducted in northeastern Brazil, where underreporting of infant mortality is of huge concern, have shown that alternative methods of data collection, including the use of “popular Death Reporters” (Members of the community who are active in traditional death rituals of the child and the family grieving process), have been very successful in providing valid, qualitative mortality statistics, effectively reducing underreporting.
Read more about this topic: Mortality Rate
Famous quotes containing the words health and/or care:
“Publicity in women is detestable. Anonymity runs in their blood. The desire to be veiled still possesses them. They are not even now as concerned about the health of their fame as men are, and, speaking generally, will pass a tombstone or a signpost without feeling an irresistible desire to cut their names on it.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Certainly the philosopher of ‘possible worlds’ must take care that his technical apparatus not push him to ask questions whose meaningfulness is not supported by our original intuitions of possibility that gave the apparatus its point.”
—Saul Kripke (b. 1940)