Suicide and road accidents are the leading cause of death among young women and men respectively, new data from the Registrar General of India shows. For the population as a whole, non-communicable diseases including cancers and digestive disease are bigger killers while infant mortality and diarrhoeal disease are reducing in impact, the data shows.
Since death certification in India is rare, restricted to urban areas and of poor quality, the RGI's office has been conducting “verbal autopsies” on a sample group across the country every few years. The last such ‘causes of death study' was conducted in 2004-6, and the RGI's office released data for 2010-13 on Tuesday. The sample consisted of 1.8 lakh deaths across the country, and the cause of death was established by interviewing the household, followed by analysis by a team of medical professionals.
The data shows that overall, cardiovascular disease is the top killer of Indians, accounting for 23 per cent of all deaths in 2010-13 as compared to 20 per cent in 2004-06. The proportion of infant and child deaths to total deaths has come down substantially, and improved healthcare has meant more deaths in the 70+ age group instead. Noncommunicable diseases account for more deaths in India's richer states than in its poorer states.
Among neonatal and infant deaths, prematurity and low birth weight has become a progressively biggest cause of death as more institutional deliveries have meant fewer birth trauma-related deaths. However there is a substantial difference between India's richer and poorer states; deaths of children under the age of 4 account for nearly 40 per cent of all deaths in the poorest states including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Assam, and just 17 per cent of deaths in the other states. The burden of child death is also higher in rural than in urban areas. Injuries have now surpassed diarrhoeal disease as the leading cause of death among boys aged 1-4 years. “Unintentional injuries” have also become the leading killers of young boys and girls aged 5-14.
Among young adults aged 15-29, road accidents have surpassed suicides as the leading cause of death of young men, while suicides are not responsible for an even larger proportion of young female deaths. Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of older adults, followed by cancers. Suicides are particularly high in the south; it is the sixth largest cause of death across age groups in the four southern states, while it does not figure among the top ten causes of death in any other region.
