Health and Mortality Among Elderly Populations

Abstract The promotion of research intoleveis, patterns, trends, and causes of mortality has been a primary concern of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) since its inception. For several decades, the activities of the IUSSP in relation to mortality studies have emphasized the need to provide reliable, sensitive tools to monitor and assess trends in child survival. This coincided with the focus of the international public health community on the prevention and control of infectious diseases. At the same time, evidence has been accumulating that the survival prospects of infants and children have increased markedly in many parts of the developing world, particularly LatinAmerica and East Asia, due in large part to the successful and sustained implementation of primary health care strategies. Concomitant with these successes, the chronic diseases have begun to emerge as major public health issues in a number of developing countries. The nature and extent of this epidemiological transition varies between countries, but essentially it is characterized by the progressive replacement of the leading causes of child death (i.e. acute-respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases, vaccine-preventable diseases, and malaria) by the major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and cancer, which are much more common among adults and the elderly.