At a death rate of 5.5‰, 66,421 Beijing citizens died in 2007. Chronic non-infectious diseases are still the major cause leading to death. The top five life-killing diseases are malignancy, brain blood vessel disease, heart disease, respiratory disease and injury and poison. Citizens dying of the five diseases account for 86.58% of the total death toll. While the number of citizens dying of infectious diseases only accounts for 0.91% of the total death toll, a quite small percentage. Viral hepatitis and tuberculosis are the most dominating infectious diseases killing people’s lives, claiming the lives of 80% of citizens who died of infectious diseases.
Compared with the ranking order of top ten life-claiming diseases in 2006, malignancy in 2007 ascends from the third place to the top place. Among those citizens dying of malignancy, 52.01% of them died of lung cancer, liver cancer and intestine cancer. Brain blood vessel disease drops to the second place from the top place in 2006 and heart disease declines to the third place from the second place in 2006.
In 2007, the death rate of male Beijing citizens is 6.09‰ and still higher than that of female Beijing citizens, which is only 4.93‰. Male and female Beijing citizens suffer the same top ten life-claiming diseases, but the ranking order of the ten life-killing diseases is different for the two groups. The top life-killing disease for male Beijing citizens is malignancy, while heart disease is still the first life killer for female Beijing citizens.
Among all malignancy deaths, lung cancer is the first killer for both male and female Beijing citizens.
Gap between urban and suburban areas could be seen in the death causes of citizens. In 2007, the death rate of urban residents is 5.34‰ and that of suburban residents is 5.90‰, higher than the former. The primary death cause for urban citizens is malignancy, while brain blood vessel disease for suburban county citizens. Among all malignancy deaths, lung cancer is also the first killer for both urban and suburban residents.
The reason for health departments of Beijing Municipality to carry out annual statistics and analysis of citizens’ death causes and ranking order lies in that: statistics and analysis of citizens’ death causes is a major measure to evaluate the public health level and population health status of a country or a region, and also one basis to evaluate the work effect of social health care efforts. It can provide reference material for health administrative departments to work out regional health planning and to reasonably distribute medical and health care resources, as well as scientific basis for the implementation of various tasks such as disease prevention and treatment.
For example, the fact that malignancy ascends to the top place for the first time indicates that while malignancy death rate speeds up consistently in recent years in Beijing, the ascending speed of the death rate of cardio-cerebral-vascular diseases gets slowed down. The phenomenon is especially evident in urban areas of Beijing. At present, most malignancy diseases are still lack of effective early-stage diagnosis method and treatment measures. Prevention and treatment strategy remains to be further studied by scientists. However, cardio-cerebral-vascular diseases are chronic diseases resulted from unhealthy life style. Researches indicate that 80% of cardio-cerebral-vascular diseases are preventable. This requires health and disease prevention departments to continue their efforts in the prevention and treatment work of cardio-cerebral-vascular diseases, especially in suburban districts and counties.
Cardio-cerebral-vascular diseases rank among the top three life-killing diseases. Therefore, it is very necessary for us to take active prevention measures.
The prevention method is to control interventional risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, overweight, smoking, excessive drinking and sedentary life style, unhealthy eating habits and so on. The risk of onset of cardio-cerebral-vascular diseases could be minimized as long as these dangerous factors are under good control.