Levels and Patterns of Mortality at INDEPTH Demographic Surveillance Systems

Excerpt

In 1998 a large number of DSS sites formed an international network called the INDEPTH Network. Details of the sites, their locations, the populations they follow, and basic demographic outputs of each site are available on the Internet (www.indepth-network.net) and in INDEPTH Network (2002). The central purpose of the INDEPTH Network is to facilitate cross-site analyses of comparable data across broader geographic areas with more diverse circumstances in order to answer questions that cannot be answered within individual sites. Comparative mortality and mortality patterns are an obvious first endeavor of such a network, and these are provided in this chapter. By the efforts of the members of the INDEPTH Network, for the first time schedules of mortality in Africa and empirical data on age standardization and on age and sex structure are available. This network is the source of the analyses presented in this chapter.

Standardized mortality rates were computed based on the new INDEPTH Network standard population that for the first time is derived from empirical data. The INDEPTH standard population typifies the true structure of the young population in Sub-Saharan Africa. The chapter then presents basic life table indicators for INDEPTH sites, based on their age-specific mortality rates over the 1995–99 period. Seven new mortality patterns are developed from more than 4.2 million person-years of observation at the African INDEPTH sites. These patterns are demonstrated to be substantially different from conventionally used model mortality patterns applied to Africa.