Afghanistan Mortality Survey 2010 - Measure DHS

Road traffic accidents cause 24 percent of male injury-related deaths and 18 percent of femaledeaths; they account for a sizeable proportion of injury-related deaths for both sexes and all age groups.Among children under age 15, deaths from drowning and falls account for sizeable proportions of injuryrelateddeaths. Fires are a common cause of injury-related deaths to women, but not for men.8.4 CAUSES OF MATERNAL DEATHSAmong the deaths investigated through the VerbalAutopsy Questionnaire were 64 deaths due to maternalconditions. As shown in Table 8.3, hemorrhage is by far theleading cause of maternal deaths in Afghanistan (56 percent).Eclampsia is associated with one-fifth of maternal deaths andprolonged or obstructed labor with 11 percent of maternal deaths.The percentage of maternal deaths attributed to sepsis isrelatively low (5 percent). Also, indirect causes of maternaldeath—pre-existing conditions and diseases aggravated bypregnancy and delivery—are relatively rare (5 percent), whichmay be due to underreporting of such causes in the verbalautopsy interview, or coding preferences of the physicians.Table 8.3 Causes of maternal deathsPercent distribution of maternal deaths in thethree years before the survey by cause ofdeath, Afghanistan 2010CausePercentageHemorrhage 55.9Prolonged or obstructed labor 10.7Other direct causes 3.6Pre-eclampsia / Eclampsia 19.8Sepsis / infection 5.0Indirect causes 5.1Total 100.0Number of deaths 64Note: Data are derived from the verbalautopsy questionnaires.Hemorrhage was found to be the major cause of maternal deaths in three of the four sites studiedin the 2002 RAMOS study in Afghanistan (Bartlett et al., 2005). Hemorrhage was also found to be theleading cause of maternal deaths in neighboring countries like Bangladesh (NIPORT et al., 2003) andPakistan (NIPS and MI, 2008).8.5 CAUSES OF CHILDHOOD DEATHSTable 8.4 presents the distribution of causes of death among children under five by age group forboth sexes combined. The leading causes of death are acute respiratory infections (ARI) and other severeinfections, each of which accounts for about 20 percent of under-5 deaths in Afghanistan. Disordersrelated to the perinatal period also cause a substantial proportion of childhood deaths (15 percent). Thelatter category may include some deaths due to asphyxia, as the proportion of neonatal deaths assigned tothis cause (3 percent) is considerably lower than expected based on data from other populations. Amongneonatal deaths, disorders related to the perinatal period are associated with 35 percent of deaths. Acuterespiratory infection is the most common cause of death in the postneonatal (35 percent) and earlychildhood period (23 percent). Injury is also a common cause of death among children aged 12-59 months(22 percent). The relatively low proportion of deaths attributed to diarrhea is remarkable.Cause of Death | 139