Unattended death causes amongst elderly population in developing countries: the case of Brazil

Paulo Jurza, Centro de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional (CEDEPLAR)
Daylin Javique, Centro de Estudios Demográficos (CEDEM)
Rodrigo Arantes, Centro de Desenvolvimento e Planejamento Regional (CEDEPLAR)

It is known that an important proportion of ill-defined causes of death indicate poor health care systems and obstacles for interventions, since accurate distribution of causes of death are unknown. These issues are of particular importance in developing societies, where scarce health care resources neglect some population groups as, for instance, the elderly. Its importance rises when these societies go through transitions causing the aging of the population and increase of elderly population. Being an example is Brazil, which is a country characterized by an extreme social inequality among its regions. To investigate these ill-defined deaths among Brazilian population (aged 60 or more), the focus is on unattended deaths, in 1996-2005, which, in Brazil, shows great regional disparities. The Brazilian DATASUS/SIM (System of Information on Mortality) is the source of data. And, despite the general downwards trend, 1.3 thousand municipalities out of the 5.6 thousands show increments in this rate.