Unnatural-death rates soaring in South Africa: mortality report by Statistics-South Africa

The number of people dying of unnatural causes in South Africa is soaring. One in every 10 deaths is now the result of road accidents, violent assault, suicide and other non-natural causes, according to a mortality report released by Statistics South Africa yesterday. It shows that more than half of the deaths of young men, aged 15 to 29, are unnatural. This category of causes has been steadily accounting for more and more deaths in the past five years and is now at its highest level since 2002."For both sexes, the age group mostly affected by non-natural causes of death was 15-29 years. Some 34.5% of all deaths in this age group were due to non-natural causes," says the report. It was even worse for young males - more than 50% of their deaths were unnatural."The age group least affected by non-natural causes was 65 years and older, where less than 3% of deaths were due to non-natural causes," says StatsSA. Most of the non-natural deaths were in categories that give little detail of the circumstances, such as "other external causes of accidental injury" and "event of undetermined intent". But the numbers make surprising reading. -- More people die violently in the Western Cape than in Gauteng, the report shows. -- "Assault" as a death category got 1102 ticks in the Western Cape, compared with 1080 in the Eastern Cape, 855 in KwaZulu-Natal and 521 in Gauteng. This means that 2.4% of all the deaths in the Western Cape are from assault. In Gauteng, it is about 0.5%. A report by the Institute of Race Relations two months ago fingered the Eastern Cape as the province with the highest murder rate, with the Western Cape next and Gauteng back in sixth place. -- StatsSA's report also showed that more people perish on Limpopo's roads than on those in any other province. -- Nearly 1200 people died from "transport accidents", exceeding even those in festive-season hot spots KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape. The report shows that the suicide rate in the least populated province, Northern Cape, is 39 times higher than in the most populated province, Gauteng. But South Africans are living longer. In 2013, the median age at death for females was 55.9 years and 50.3 years for males, up from the low forties in 2004. A total of 458,933 died from all causes last year, down from 491,100 in 2012 and the nearly 614,000 in 2006. The biggest killer was tuberculosis, followed by influenza and pneumonia, and AIDS. http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/12/03/violent-end-stalks-sa-s-young-people