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TB remains number one killer in SA

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Tuberculosis remains the number one killer disease in South Africa, followed by diabetes. This is according to the Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) 2016 mortality and cause death report released in Pretoria earlier on Tuesday.

HIV is the third leading cause of deaths in men while it ranks number six in females.

The leading cause of death in black Africans is TB, while most whites die of heart diseases and in coloured and Indians the leading cause of death is diabetes.

“TB remains an underlying leading cause of death for males accounting for 7.6 percent, and for females TB is a lot lower as opposed to men. It ranks at position number five, number one for males and number five for females. Let us look at the leading cause of death for females, its diabetes. But when we look at men its sitting at position number six,” says Statistician General Risenga Maluleke.

“In 2016, a total of 456 612 deaths occurred marking a decline of 3,5% from the 473 266 death occurrences for 2015 that have been updated for late registration,” the report indicated.

It says, mortality, overall, now occurs at older ages for both sexes, which is an indication of decline in premature mortality.

In 2016, male deaths peaked at age group 60-64 years (8,6%), while female deaths peaked at a much older age group (75−79 years [8,3%]).

Stats SA says that most 2016 death occurrences occurred in the most populous provinces Gauteng (21,3%) and KwaZulu-Natal (18,6%).

It is worth noting that a high proportion of deaths continue to occur at home instead of health care facilities and this may impact on the accuracy of the certification of causes of deaths, it added.

The report shows that based on provincial differentials diabetes mellitus in Western Cape, other forms of heart diseases in Gauteng and influenza and pneumonia in Limpopo were the leading underlying natural causes. For the rest of the provinces tuberculosis was the top-ranked natural cause.

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