Page 112 - SAMRC Annual Report 2024-2025

Burden of Disease
Research Unit

Unit director:
Prof. Richard Matzopoulos
richard.matzopoulos@mrc.ac.za

Advancing Research Priorities: It also revealed significant underreporting of HIV/
Strategic Objectives and Impact AIDS deaths and misclassification of injury-related
deaths, particularly suicides, and that homicides
The Burden of Disease Research Unit's (BODRU) and road traffic fatalities featured prominently
mission is to assess and monitor the country's among the top causes of death for males but not for
health status and determinants of disease, which females. The revised cause-of-death profile showed
provides an essential foundation for guiding policy, that HIV/AIDS remains the leading cause of death,
programmes and practice.
accounting for 23.3% of all deaths and a strong
Key projects include Rapid Mortality Surveillance to link between TB and HIV, highlighting the need to
measure excess mortality and estimate the national find, follow up, prevent, and treat HIV/AIDS and TB
burden of disease and the risk factors that drive the to reduce mortality. This has particular relevance in
disease burden to provide information for planning light of the recent abrupt withdrawal of US funding
and resource allocation. Our estimates are derived support for the Government's HIV/AIDS response.
from empirical sources including the National
Population Register, Census, research surveys BODRU hosts the only WHO Collaborating Centre
and death notification. Estimates are adjusted for for the Family of International Classifications
known deficiencies such as underreporting and (WHO-FIC) in Africa. Our 2024-25 application for
misclassification (especially HIV/AIDS and injury redesignation by the WHO was successful, and we
deaths) to provide information fit for use to improve expect to play a critical role in providing technical
population health and quality of life. This requires support in the implementation of ICD-11 nationally,
that we also evaluate and support the development as well as providing developing country input into
and improvement of routine health information the international classifications.
systems, civil registration and vital statistics in
consultation with government agencies.

Key Milestones and Achievements
BODRU led a large nationwide study to assess the
accuracy of cause-of-death data collected through
South Africa's Civil Registration and Vital Statistics
(CRVS) system by comparing official death records
with data gathered from medical records, forensic
reports, and verbal autopsy interviews for a sample of
deaths. The study found poor agreement between the
underlying cause of death identified by researchers
and the official recorded cause of death data, with
only 36.9% agreement for over 15,000 linked deaths.

110 SAMRC ANNUAL REPOR T 2024-25