The injury mortality burden in Guinea

BACKGROUND: The injury mortality burden of Guinea has been rarely addressed. The paper aimed to report patterns of injury mortality burden in Guinea. METHODS: We retrieved the mortality data from the Guinean Annual Health Statistics Report 2007. The information about underlying cause of deaths was collected based on Guinean hospital discharge data, Hospital Mortuary and City Council Mortuary data. The causes of death are coded in the 9(th) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-9). Multivariate Poisson regression was used to test the impacts of sex and age on mortality rates. The statistical analyses were performed using Stata(tm) 10.0. RESULTS: In 2007, 7066 persons were reported dying of injuries in Guinea (mortality: 72.8 per 100,000 population). Transportation, fire/burn, falls, homicide and drowning were the five leading causes of fatal injuries for the whole population, accounting for 37%, 22%, 12%, 10% and 6% of total deaths, respectively. In general, age-specific injury causes displayed similar patterns of the whole population except that poisoning replaced falls as a leading cause among children under five years old. Males were at 30-50% more risk of dying from six commonest causes than females and old age groups had higher injury mortality rates than younger age groups. CONCLUSION: Transportation, fire/burn, falls, homicide, and drowning accounted for the majority of total injury mortality burden in Guinea. Males and old adults were high-risk population of fatal injuries and should be targeted by injury prevention. Lots of work is needed to improve weak capacities for injury control in order to reduce the injury mortality burden.