Causes and trends of adult mortality in southern Ethiopia: an eight-year follow up database study

BACKGROUND: Broad and specific causes of adult mortalities are often neglected indicators of wellbeing in low-income countries like Ethiopia due to lack of strong vital statistics. Thus, this database study aimed to assess the causes of adult mortality using demographic surveillance data. METHODS: An 8-year (12 September 2009–11 September 2017) surveillance data from the Arba Minch Health and Demographic Surveillance Site was used for this study. Verbal autopsy methods and ICD codes were used to identify the causes of the adult deaths. The collected data were entered to the database by data clerks. We used Microsoft Excel and STATA version 16 software for data cleaning and analysis. Chi-squared test was used to see the significances of the trend analyses. RESULT: From the 943 adult deaths from 2009 to 2017 in the Health and Demographic Surveillance Site in southern Ethiopia, more than half of them were females. The specific leading cause of death in the adults were tuberculosis (16.8%), malaria (9.7%), and intestinal infectious diseases (9.6%). Communicable diseases (49.2%, 95% C.I 45.7, 52.7) accounted for about half of the deaths followed by non-communicable diseases (35%, 95% C.I 31.7, 38.4) where both categories showed an increasing trend. CONCLUSION: Although pieces of evidences are showing the shift from communicable diseases to non-communicable diseases as the major causes of adult death in developing countries, this study showed that communicable diseases are still the major causes of adult deaths. Efforts and emphasis should be given to control infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12879-023-07988-5.