It's hard to tally what causes deaths in situations like these. Reuters/K. K. Arora
In
most rich countries, the bulk of deaths occur in hospitals. But in
India, where 9.5 million people die each year, as many as 75% of those
deaths happen at home, work or on the street. Until recently, health
officials knew little about what causes these deaths since they aren’t
accompanied by the paperwork drawn up by hospitals or police.
But
the Million Death Study (MDS), a project led by Prabhat Jha, a
University of Toronto epidemiologist and public health specialist, is
changing that. Since 1997, the Jha and colleagues have used “verbal
autopsy,” surveys of around 450,000 deaths, according to Nature. One thing they’re finding is that causes of death vary wildey by region:
As
you can see, most of these factors have to do with the surrounding
environment, whether the prevalence of malaria-carrying mosquitoes or
stressful jobs.
The
study also highlights which diseases are more prevalent in India. Take,
for example, chronic respiratory problems like asthma:
Some
of Jha and his colleagues’ findings vary dramatically from previous
estimates on causes of death in India from the World Health Organization
or other global institutions. The MDS results suggest that 205,000
people die from malaria and 45,900 from snake-bites each year in
India—much higher rates than what the WHO and other groups project.
Some
of the Jha’s estimates are lower than those of other international
organizations. For instance, the MDS found that 100,000 Indians die of
HIV each year, less than the 140,000 that the United Nations reports (pdf, p.A42). And the UN has actually come down somewhat in the 400,000 it once estimated,
according to University of Toronto Magazine. Those lower estimates
speak to some skewed priorities: Malaria kills twice as many people in
India as HIV does each year, and yet it receives much less attention and
funding. Here’s a look at grant money disbursements of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an international financing institution for public health:
Payments made by the Global Fund to grant recipients in India.The Global Fund
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