Acknowledgments

The Palestinian National Institute of Public Health would like to express its gratitude to the Palestinian Ministry of Health for their generous support in compiling this report. This report would not have been possible without the dedicated collaboration of the Palestinian Health Information Center (PHIC) in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in providing PNIPH with the data and assisting in revising the report. The input of the World Health Organization EMRO (Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office) is also appreciated

Summary

This report assesses the quality of cause of death registry data for the West Bank and Gaza Strip for 2021 using the ANACoD3 software tool. The results are intended to enhance the value and usability of these data for informing health policies and programs.

The data comprise 17,354 reported deaths, 10,137 of them in the West Bank and 7,217 in the Gaza Strip. Along with a variety of demographic and epidemiological indicators like sex- and age-specific mortality rates, crude death rates, life expectancy at birth, causes of death distributed by the Global Burden of Disease categories, leading causes of death, and the proportion of ill-defined causes of death, this report also reveals indicators that point to potential data quality issues. Additionally, a thorough examination of the external causes of mortality was conducted for ICD-10 data. To maximize the value and usefulness of these health data for use in building health policies and programs, this analysis identifies data quality concerns that need to be addressed. Table 1 below summarizes the key findings and suggestions for recommended actions. Findings from the West Bank and Gaza Strip indicate that action is needed to improve the quality of cause of death data by enhancing completeness and the usability index, and reducing the number of ill-defined causes of death by ICD chapter, and the frequency of specific ill-defined codes in death data.