One important aspect of the study of mortality covers the causes of death. Usually, on each death certificate, signed by a medical person, the cause of death is recorded in terms of the immediate cause and the antecedent cause as well as other significant conditions associated with the death.
This information provides the basis for the study of causes of death. For very few countries, however, reliable data on causes of death are available. According to the United Nations, in 1960, such data were available for slightly less than one-third of the world’s population.
This percentage was 95 for the population of Europe and North America, 80 for that of Oceania and 50 for that of Latin America. Asia and Africa record very low percentages of population for whom data on causes of death were available.
For only 14 out of 57 countries in Africa and 21 out of 46 countries in Asia, data on the causes of death are available.
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The quality of such data usually suffers from many deficiencies, such as under-reporting of total deaths, high percentage of deaths not medically certified, or a large proportion of deaths attributed to senility, ill-defined and unknown causes or the/residual causes consisting of “all other diseases.”
International comparisons of the causes of death by regions, continents or countries is made difficult because of differences in terminology, method of certification, diagnostic techniques and the interpretation of death certificates by the coders.
Another difficulty in the analysis of mortality, on the basis of the causes of death, is that death often results, not because of a single cause, but because of series of diseases, leading to difficulties of selecting the exact cause of death from such a series.
When the declaration of the cause of death is made by a non-medical person as in many countries, it is bound to be inaccurate as compared to a situation where the cause of death is recorded by a qualified medical person.
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Despite these difficulties, however, a study of the available data presents quite clearly a broad picture of mortality on the basis of the causes of death.