Mortality trends in a new South Africa: Hard to make a fresh start1

AIMS: This paper examines trends in age-specific mortality in a rural South African population from 1992 to 2003, a decade spanning major sociopolitical change and emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Changing mortality patterns are discussed within a health-transition framework. METHODS: Data on population size, structure, and deaths, obtained from the Agincourt health and demographic surveillance system, were used to calculate person-years at risk and death rates. Life tables were computed by age, sex and calendar year. Mortality rates for the early period 1992-93 and a decade later, 2002-03, were compared. RESULTS: Findings demonstrate significant increases in mortality for both sexes since the mid-1990s, with a rapid decline in life expectancy of 12 years in females and 14 years in males. The increases are most prominent in children (0-4) and young adult (20-49) age groups, in which increases of two- and fivefold respectively have been observed in the past decade. Sex differences in mortality patterns are evident with increases more marked in females in most adult age groups. CONCLUSIONS: Empirical data demonstrate a marked "counter transition" with mortality increasing in children and young adults, "epidemiologic polarization" with vulnerable subgroups experiencing a higher mortality burden, and a "protracted transition" with simultaneous emergence of HIV/AIDS together with increasing non-communicable disease in older adults. The health transition in rural South Africa is unlikely to predict patterns elsewhere; hence the need to examine trends in as many contexts as have the data to support such analyses.