As has been the procedure since 2002, the RGD receives Sudden and Violent death data from the Jamaica Constabulary Force, specifically through the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN) and includes the presentation of this data along with data from RGD’s database. The CCN provides the RGD with data from its database for the specified reporting year for the following Sudden and Violent death categories: i) Fatal Shootings, ii) Motor Vehicle Accidents, iii) Murder and iv) Suicide.

The deaths reported by the Police are presented in this section, by themselves and also combined with RGD’s death data. Only police data which is unique to RGD’s data is added however, since some of these deaths have already been registered by the RGD.

There were a total of 1,981 deaths reported by the police in 2004. In the previous year, 1,560 deaths were reported which indicates a significant increase of 421 or 27.0%. A total of 1,679 were reported in 2002 which indicated a minimal decline of 119 or 7.1% from 2002 to 2003. Overall from 2002 to 2004 there was an increase of 302 or 18.0%.

· Regions

For 2004, as is expected, the South Eastern region accounted for 1,274 or 64.3% of all deaths reported by the police. In the previous year, this region had 952 or 61.0% of the 1,560 deaths for the entire island. This is an absolute increase of 322 or 33.9% from 2003 to 2004.

Of all South Eastern deaths, Kingston, St. Andrew and St. Catherine accounted for 1,238 or 97.2% of that region’s deaths or 62.5% of the island’s deaths. For 2003, the corresponding value was 916 or 96.2% of regional total and 58.8% of all police-reported deaths.

In respect of the remaining regions, the Western region had 317 (16.0%) police-reported deaths, the Southern region had 256 (12.9%) and the North Eastern had 134 or 6.8%. In 2003, the respective values were: Western – 282 (18.1%), Southern – 226 (14.5%) and North Eastern – 100 (6.4%).

Examination of the data by month of occurrence, reveals that October and June were the leading months with 200 deaths (10.1%) and 199 deaths (10.0%) respectively. Conversely, March had the lowest number with 121 or 6.1%.

 

TABLE 15h: SUDDEN AND VIOLENT DEATHS OCCURRING IN 2004 BY PARISH AND MONTH OF OCCURRENCE (AS REPORTED BY THE POLICE)

·  Police and RGD Data Combined

As mentioned at the beginning of this section, the police-reported deaths are matched against RGD’s database. This is done using certain key identifier fields. Table 15j is a result of this matching process and is a summary of the police-reported data without these matches. Of the 1,981 death total for 2004, there were 199 matches and the unique police-reported deaths totalled 1,782. In the previous year, there were 191 matches and 1,369 unique death occurrences.

TABLE 15i: SUDDEN AND VIOLENT DEATHS OCCURRING IN 2004 BY PARISH AND MONTH OF OCCURRENCE (ADJUSTED FOR THOSE REGISTERED)

The next process was to combine the unique data with RGD’s death occurrences for 2004. Table 15j therefore is a combination of Table 10 and 15i. This is the addition of the 13,364 (Table 10) and 1,782 (Table 15i) which totals 15,146 deaths. This complement represents all 2004 death occurrences. For 2003, the combination of RGD and police-reported data totalled 16,036.

 

TABLE 15j: TOTAL DEATHS OCCURING IN 2004 BY PARISH AND MONTH OF OCCURRENCE (RGD AND POLICE DATA COMBINED)

·  Police Data – Cause of Death by Sex and Age Groups

The police-reported data with respect to underlying cause of death is presented in Table 15k, 15l and 15m. The data represented applies to the 1,782 unique deaths. This indicated an increase of 413 or 30.2% over the previous year’s total of 1,369 deaths. Of the 1,782 deaths, there were 303 deaths attributed to “Transport accidents”, 40 deaths to “Intentional self harm” or suicide 1,333 deaths to “Assault” and 106 deaths to “All other external causes”.

TABLE 15k: SUMMARY OF MALE AND FEMALE SUDDEN AND VIOLENT DEATHS OCCURING BY CAUSE AND AGE (1-100 YEARS) FOR 2004· Males

Of all 1,782 unique police-report deaths, 1,579 or 88.6% of the deceased were males. Of this total, there were 240 victims of “Transport accidents”, 31 of “Intentional self harm”, 1,202 of “Assault” and 106 of “All other external causes”. Previously there were 1,210 (83.4%) male police-reported deaths, 270 of which were due to “Transport accidents”, 43 due to “Intentional self harm”, 783 due to “Assault” and 114 due to “All other external causes”. Immediately, it is observed that the only category that increased was “Assault”.

TABLE 15l: SUMMARY OF MALE SUDDEN AND VIOLENT DEATHS OCCURRING BY CAUSE AND AGE (1-100 YEARS) FOR 2004

·  Females
Of the 1,782 unique police-report deaths, 203 or 11.4% of the deceased were females. Of this total, there were 63 victims of “Transport accidents”, 9 victims of “Intentional self harm” and 131 victims of “Assault”. Previously, there were a total of 159 police-reported deaths, “Transport accidents” caused 70 deaths, “Intentional self harm” caused 9, “Assault” caused 78 and “All other external causes” caused 2 deaths. Again, the only category to increase was “Assault”.

TABLE 15m: SUMMARY OF FEMALE SUDDEN AND VIOLENT DEATHS OCCURRING BY CAUSE AND AGE (1-100 YEARS) FOR 2004

Deaths by Cause and Residence of Deceased

This is the most recently added section of the report. It presents data on the deaths registered in the current reporting year by cause of death and parish of residence of deceased. When considering facets of vital statistics, it is thought to be more beneficial to consider location of residence rather than location of occurrence of the event. In the utilisation of vital statistics in planning, the location of occurrence lends itself to offer direct information on exactly where services are needed and where preventative programs need to be implemented. Therefore, in the case of births, data on parish of residence of mother can indicate where an additional hospital or birthing facility is needed. Trends in mortality data by residence of deceased can also inform as to the degree to which the residence of specific areas are being affected and by which diseases.

The new tables presented in this section of the report present mortality data for adults (individuals 5 years and over) by cause according to ICD-10 and by parish of residence of deceased. The data is presented for all deaths registered in 2004.

Table 15n shows all adult female deaths by cause and parish of residence of deceased. Here, the distributions across each parish can be seen for each ICD-10 category for the 6,606 adult female deaths. 

Table 15o shows all adult male deaths by cause and parish of residence of deceased. The distributions for these deaths are seen for the 6,857 adult male deaths.

Table 15p shows the fourteen leading causes of deaths for all adults (previously presented in Table 15d) by cause and parish of residence of deceased.

TABLE 15n: SUMMARY OF ADULT FEMALE DEATHS (5-100 YEARS) BY CAUSE AND PARISH OF RESIDENCE OF DECEASED FOR 2004

TABLE 15o: SUMMARY OF ADULT MALE DEATHS (5-100 YEARS) BY CAUSE AND PARISH OF RESIDENCE OF DECEASED FOR 2004
TABLE 15p: LEADING CAUSES OF DEATHS FOR ALL ADULTS (5-100 YEARS) BY CAUSE AND PARISH OF RESIDENCE OF DECEASED FOR 2004

Chart 6 shows a summary of the data from this table for the ten leading causes of deaths for adults and their distribution across each parish. It can be observed that “Cerebrovascular disease” and “Diabetes mellitus” both make significant contributions to each parish’s death total. Additionally, for Kingston and St. James, “Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) disease” also contributed a significant number of deaths toward those parishes’ top ten totals.

CHART 6: TEN LEADING CAUSES OF DEATHS SHOWING PERCENTAGE CONTRIBUTION TO EACH PARISH OF RESIDENCE OF DECEASED FOR 2004 DEATH REGISTRATIONS