Adult mortality in a rural area of Senegal: trends and causes of death

Géraldine Duthé, Institut national d'études démographiques (INED)
Gilles Pison, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Adult mortality in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa is difficult to estimate because of the lack of reliable data. This is true for the overall level of mortality and also for mortality due to specific causes of death. In this presentation, we provide original estimates of adult mortality in Mlomp, a rural population of Senegal which has been monitored for twenty years. Though remaining at a relatively low level, global mortality increased slightly during the early 90s. In this study, we focused on the description of the causes of death among adults to determine which causes are responsible for raising the mortality level: accidents and external causes bring about many deaths among adults who work and travel, and cancer mortality appears to have increased in the last twenty years. All these causes and diseases more specifically concern men, who have higher levels of mortality than women.