The long weekend is over, so let’s wallow in self-pity with a rather morbid story.

Chronic diseases, known as “non-communicable” diseases in the medical world, continue to come out tops when it comes to the most common cause of death in South Africa.

This was evident in the 2016 Mortality and Causes of Death in South Africa report, released by statistician-general Risenga Maluleke last week, which provides “an overview of what South Africans die from, and highlights variations by age, sex and geographic location,” reports HuffPost:

There were 456,612 deaths recorded in 2016, 52.7 percent of whom were females, with 47.3 percent being male. Most deaths occurred in Gauteng, followed by KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape.

88.8 percent deaths that took place in 2016 were due to natural causes, and 11.2 percent were attributed to non-natural causes.

First up, here’s a graph that shows the number of deaths since 1997, and below that a graph that shows deaths sorted by province:

So what are the actual causes of all these deaths? Well, wouldn’t you like to know:

First, the top five natural causes:

1. Tubercolosis
2. Diabetes
3. Various forms of heart disease e.g. pericarditis‚ endocarditis‚ pulmonary valve disorders‚ cardiac arrest‚ atrial fibrillation
4. Cerebrovascular diseases (strokes)
5. HIV

How is TB still up there?

Then, the top five unnatural causes:

1. Other external causes of accidental injury
2. Assault
3. Transport accidents
4. Event of undetermined intent (where available information is insufficient to enable a medical or legal authority to make a distinction between accident, self-harm and assault)
5. Complications of medical and surgical care

Now that you know, perhaps you can work on reducing your chances.

After this weekend’s chocolate-guzzling antics, diabetes is top of my worries.

[source:huffingtonpost]