The MDS was conceived to study previously undocumented at-home deaths to gain a more statistically representative understanding of disease patterns in India.
[1] A large amount of data and a wide range of causes of death from the MDS necessitated forming working groups of internal and external scientists to review and interpret results.
Annual Indian deaths based on the Million Death Study results: The various results of the MDS, combined with geospatial analysis, show that each disease has largely varying prevalence rates throughout India, indicated that regional factors affect the prevalence and that these sources of premature mortality are largely avoidable.
A wider selection of maternal and newborn health indicators on the surveyor questionnaires during data harvest would have allowed the more detailed study of these sources of premature mortality.
[3] The verbal autopsy method operates with the assumption that most causes of death can be recognized by trained physicians based on descriptions of signs and symptoms provided by an extant close relation of the deceased.
Published findings from analyses of MDS data have guided several of the Indian Government’s public health policy decisions in the 2000s and early 2010s.
The MDS model of data harvesting using low-cost field surveying and the verbal autopsy method has also prompted interest in replicating the study in several other low and middle-income countries.