@article{ref1,
title="Quality assessment of capture-recapture studies in resource-limited countries",
journal="Tropical medicine and international health",
year="2011",
author="van Hest, Rob and Grant, Andrew and Abubakar, Ibrahim",
volume="16",
number="8",
pages="1019-1041",
abstract="Objectives  Resource-limited countries often lack robust routine surveillance systems to accurately assess the burden of human attributes and diseases. In these settings capture-recapture analysis can be an alternative tool to obtain prevalence and incidence rates. Performance of capture-recapture analyses in resource-limited countries has not been systematically reviewed. Methods  Systematic review of the performance of capture-recapture analyses in the categories of human attributes, non-infectious and infectious diseases in resource-limited countries, assessing individual study quality criteria and a minimum quality criterion per category, using PRISMA methodology. Results  A total of 1671 potentially relevant PubMed citations were screened, resulting in 52 eligible publications: 36% in human attributes, i.e. hidden populations, injuries and mortality; 48% in non-infectious and 15% in infectious disease categories. Twenty-one per cent of selected studies were from low income countries, 40% from lower-middle-income countries and 38% from upper-middle-income countries. Thirteen per cent achieved good individual study quality criteria, 25% were intermediate and 19% were poor. Of the good studies, six were performed on human attributes and one on a non-infectious disease. The proportions of publications meeting the minimum quality criterion per category were 42%, 20% and 37%, respectively. Conclusions  Few capture-recapture studies in resource-limited countries achieved good individual quality criteria and a minority met the minimum quality criterion per category. Capture-recapture techniques in these settings should be carefully considered and implemented rigorously and are not a panacea for strengthening of routine surveillance systems.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="1360-2276",
doi="10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011.02790.x",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2011.02790.x"
}