Twice a year, senior registrar officials visit households across India that reported deaths in the previous six months, carrying verbal autopsy forms.
Each verbal autopsy form is sent to two doctors from a pool of about 300, who independently assign a probable cause of death.
If their verdicts match, the cause of death is made final. Otherwise, a senior doctor is asked to arbitrate and make a decision.
Some 42,000 autopsies have been gathered and analyzed, each on a paper form. Because of the study's reliance on paper, it could take anywhere from four to five years before the final results are available.
That reservoir of information will be valuable to public health specialists, but will probably bring little to the families who were its subjects.
The results will never be shared with them, and the deaths will remain unexplained.
