Skip to main content
Key Specialties
Cardiology Diabetology Endocrinology Gastroenterology Geriatrics and Gerontology Gynecology and Obstetrics Hematology Infectious Disease Internal Medicine Nephrology Neurology Oncology Pediatrics Respiratory Medicine Rheumatology Surgery
Congress Coverage
2024 ACC Congress 2023 ESMO Congress 2023 EASD Congress 2023 ERS Congress 2023 ESC Congress
Clinical Collections
Advances in Alzheimer’s

Keynote webinar | Spotlight on medication adherence

LIVE: Thursday 27th June 2024, 18:00-19:30 (CEST)
Join our expert panel to discover why you need to understand the drivers of non-adherence in your patients, and how you can optimize medication adherence in your clinics to drastically improve patient outcomes.
ADVANCED SEARCH
Log in
Top
BMC Public Health
Published in: BMC Public Health 1/2015

Open Access 01-12-2015 | Research article

Causes of adult female deaths in Bangladesh: findings from two National Surveys

Authors: Quamrun Nahar, Shams El Arifeen, Kanta Jamil, Peter Kim Streatfield

Published in: BMC Public Health | Issue 1/2015

Login to get access

Abstract

Background

Assessment of causes of death and changes in pattern of causes of death over time are needed for programmatic purposes. Limited national level data exist on the adult female causes of death in Bangladesh.

Method

Using data from two nationally representation surveys, the 2001 and 2010 Bangladesh Maternal Mortality Surveys (BMMS), the paper examines the causes of adult female death, aged 15–49 years, and changes in the patterns of these deaths. In both surveys, all household deaths three years prior to the survey were identified. Adult female deaths were then followed by a verbal autopsy (VA) using the WHO structured questionnaire. Two physicians independently reviewed the VA forms to assign a cause of death using the ICD-10; in case of disagreement, a third physician made an independent review and assigned a cause of death.

Results

The overall mortality rates for women aged 15–49 in 2001 and 2010 were 182 per 100,000 and 120 per 100,000 respectively. There is a shift in the pattern of causes of death during the period covered by the two surveys. In the 2001 survey, the main causes of death were maternal (20 %), followed by diseases of the circulatory system (15 %), malignancy (14 %) and infectious diseases (13 %). However, in the 2010 survey, malignancies were the leading cause (21 %), followed by diseases of the circulatory system (16 %), maternal causes (14 %) and infectious diseases (8 %). While maternal deaths remained the number one cause of death among 20–34 years old in both surveys, unnatural deaths were the main cause for teenage deaths, and malignancies were the main cause of death for older women. Although there is an increasing trend in the proportion of women who died in hospitals, in both surveys most women died at home (74 % in 2001 and 62 % in 2010).

Conclusion

The shift in the pattern of causes of adult female deaths is in agreement with the overall change in the disease pattern from communicable to non-communicable diseases in Bangladesh. Suicide and other violent deaths as the primary cause of deaths among teenage girls demands specific interventions to prevent such premature deaths. Prevention of deaths due to non-communicable diseases should also be a priority.
Footnotes
1
The underlying cause of death is defined as the disease or injury which initiated the chain of morbid events leading directly to death, or the accident/act which produced the fatal injury.
 
Literature
1.
2.
Chandramohan D, Maude GH, Rodrigues LC, Hayes RJ. Verbal autopsies for adult deaths: issues in their development and validation. Int J Epidemiol. 1994;23(2):213–22.CrossRefPubMed
3.
4.
5.
Molla A. Epidemiological Transition and Its Implications for Financing of Health Care: A Case Study in Bangladesh. Inaugural Conference of the American Society of Health Economists. TBA, Madison, WI, USA: Economics of Population Health; 2006.
6.
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS). Population & Housing Census: Preliminary Results,2011. Dhaka, Bangladesh: Statistics Division, Ministry of Planning; 2011.
7.
Alam N, Chowdhury HR, Bhuiyan MA, Streatfield PK. Causes of death of adults and elderly and healthcare-seeking before death in rural Bangladesh. J Health Popul Nutr. 2010;28(5):520.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
8.
Fauveau V, Wojtyniak B, Koenig MA, Chakraborty J, Chowdhury A. Epidemiology and cause of deaths among women in rural Bangladesh. Int J Epidemiol. 1989;18(1):139–45.CrossRefPubMed
9.
Yusuf HR, Akhter HH, Chowdhury ME, Rochat RW. Causes of death among women aged 10–50 years in Bangladesh, 1996–1997. J Health Popul Nutr. 2007;25(3):302.PubMedPubMedCentral
10.
Chen LC, Rahman M, Sarder A. Epidemiology and causes of death among children in a rural area of Bangladesh. Int J Epidemiol. 1980;9(1):25–34.CrossRefPubMed
11.
Zimicki S, Nahar L, Sarder A, D’Souza S. Demographic Surveillance System Matlab. Vol. 13: Cause of Death Reporting in Matlab Source Book of Cause-Specific Mortality Rates 1975–1981.ICDDRB Scientific Report No. 63. Dhaka: ICDDRB, Bangladesh; 1985
12.
D'Souza S. Mortality case study, Matlab, Bangladesh. Bangladesh: International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research; 1985.
13.
14.
Fauveau V, Wojtyniak B, Chowdhury HR, Sarder AM. Assessment of cause of death in the Matlab Demographic Surveillance System. 1991.
15.
Snow R, Winstanley M, Marsh V, Newton C, Waruiru C, Mwangi I, et al. Childhood deaths in Africa: uses and limitations of verbal autopsies. The Lancet. 1992;340(8815):351–5.CrossRef
16.
Kamal GM, Streatfield K, Rahman S. Causes of death among children in Bangladesh. In: ClelandJ, EbanksGE, WaiL, Ali RashidMA, editors. Secondary analysis of Bangladesh Fertility Survey, 1989 data. Dhaka: National Institute of Population Research and Trainin. 1989
17.
Salway S, Nasim SMA. Levels, trends and causes of mortality in children below 5 years of age in Bangladesh: findings from a national survey. J Diarrhoeal Dis Res. 1994;12:187–93.PubMed
18.
Baqui AH, Black RE, Arifeen S, Hill K, Mitra S, al Sabir A. Causes of childhood deaths in Bangladesh: results of a nationwide verbal autopsy study. Bull World Health Organ. 1998;76(2):161.PubMedPubMedCentral
19.
Kalter HD, Gray RH, Black RE, Gultiano SA. Validation of postmortem interviews to ascertain selected causes of death in children. Int J Epidemiol. 1990;19(2):380–6.CrossRefPubMed
20.
Hernández B, Ramírez-Villalobos D, Romero M, Gómez S, Atkinson C, Lozano R. Assessing quality of medical death certification: concordance between gold standard diagnosis and underlying cause of death in selected Mexican hospitals. Popul Health Metr. 2011;9:38.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
21.
NIPORT, ORC Macro, Johns Hopkins University, ICDDR,B. Bangladesh Maternal Health Services and Maternal Mortality Survey 2001. NIPORT, ORC Macro, Johns Hopkins University, and ICDDR,B, Dhaka, Bangladesh and Calverton/Maryland, USA; 2003.
22.
National Institute of Population Research and Training (NIPORT), Measure Evaluation and icddr,b. Bangladesh maternal mortality and health care survey 2010. Dhaka: NIPORT, MEASURE Evaluation and icddr,b; 2011.
23.
Dongre AR, Singh A, Deshmukh P, Garg B. A community based cross sectional study on feasibility of lay interviewers in ascertaining causes of adult deaths by using verbal autopsy in rural Wardha. Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences. 2009; 7(4).
24.
Edmond KM, Quigley MA, Zandoh C, Danso S, Hurt C, Agyei SO, et al. Diagnostic accuracy of verbal autopsies in ascertaining the causes of stillbirths and neonatal deaths in rural Ghana. Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. 2008;22(5):417–29. The Authors, Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
25.
Baiden F, Bawah A, Biai S, Binka F, Boerma T, Byass P, et al. Setting international standards for verbal autopsy. Bull World Health Organ. 2007;85(8):570–1.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
26.
Weldearegawi B, Ashebir Y, Gebeye E, Gebregziabiher T, Yohannes M, Mussa S, et al. Emerging chronic non-communicable diseases in rural communities of Northern Ethiopia: evidence using population-based verbal autopsy method in Kilite Awlaelo surveillance site. Health Policy Plan. 2013;28(8):891–8.CrossRefPubMed
27.
28.
Quigley MA, Chandramohan D, Rodrigues LC. Diagnostic accuracy of physician review, expert algorithms and data-derived algorithms in adult verbal autopsies. Int J Epidemiol. 1999;28(6):1081–7.CrossRefPubMed
29.
Khademi H, Etemadi A, Kamangar F, Nouraie M, Shakeri R, Abaie B, et al. Verbal autopsy: reliability and validity estimates for causes of death in the Golestan Cohort Study in Iran. PLoS One. 2010;5(6), e11183.CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral
30.
Labrique A, Sikder S, Wu L, Rashid M, Ali H, Ullah B, et al. Beyond pregnancy–the neglected burden of mortality in young women of reproductive age in Bangladesh: a prospective cohort study. BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 2013;120(9):1085–9.CrossRef
31.
Moesgaard Iburg K. Global, regional, and national age–sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990–2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013. The Lancet; 2014.
32.
Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. Bangladesh Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) Results 1990-2010. Seattle, United States: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), 2013. Accessed 17 September 2015.
33.
Mashreky SR, Rahman F, Rahman A. Suicide kills more than 10,000 people every year in Bangladesh. Archives of suicide research : official journal of the International Academy for Suicide Research. 2013;17(4):387–96.CrossRef
34.
Ahmed MK, van Ginneken J, Razzaque A, Alam N. Violent deaths among women of reproductive age in rural Bangladesh. Soc Sci Med. 2004;59(2):311–9.CrossRefPubMed
35.
Johnston HB, Naved RT. Spousal Violence in Bangladesh: A Call for a Public-health Response. J Health Popul Nutr. 2008;26(3):366–77.PubMedPubMedCentral
Metadata
Title
Causes of adult female deaths in Bangladesh: findings from two National Surveys
Authors
Quamrun Nahar
Shams El Arifeen
Kanta Jamil
Peter Kim Streatfield
Publication date
01-12-2015
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Public Health / Issue 1/2015
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2458
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-015-2256-6

Other articles of this Issue 1/2015

BMC Public Health 1/2015 Go to the issue

Research article

Implementation of an HPV vaccination program in Eldoret, Kenya: results from a qualitative assessment by key stakeholders

Research article

Mental distress predicts divorce over 16 years: the HUNT study

Study protocol

The MAM’Out project: a randomized controlled trial to assess multiannual and seasonal cash transfers for the prevention of acute malnutrition in children under 36 months in Burkina Faso

Study protocol

The effect of a very brief smoking-reduction intervention in smokers who have no intention to quit: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Research article

Association between sedentary and physical activity patterns and risk factors of metabolic syndrome in Saudi men: A cross-sectional study

Research article

Food environment and fruit and vegetable intake in a urban population: A multilevel analysis