Excess mortality Survey, March, 2023

Its reported that by April 2022, COVID19 had caused more than 6 million from confirmed cases across the globe. However, the actual number of deaths associated with the pandemic are projected to be much higher than reported. Some of these deaths are thought to be the unconfirmed Covid-19 cases but also the indirectly caused deaths due to the overwhelmed health systems, lockdowns, delayed access healthcare, closure of health facilities, economic downturn and others.

To fully understand the impact of the pandemic on all-cause mortality, the objective approach it to estimate all-cause excess mortality. However, reliable data is required for this mortality estimate. In Uganda the national identification registration authority (NIRA) which is mandated to register deaths, currently captures about 7% of all expected deaths annually. Similarly, other mortality surveillance systems do not capture mortality data that is representative of the country.

Therefore, to obtain the necessary mortality data, the Uganda National Institute of Public health embarked on a household mortality survey to generate data to estimate the all-cause excess mortality in Uganda during Covid 19 pandemic and to evaluate the distribution of excess mortality by key factors including cause, age, sex, marital status, ethnicity, social economic status and others.

Following a success pilot in Jinja District in February 2023, the main survey took place during March 2023 in 14 districts across all the 14 regions in Uganda.