| |
Deaths
2003
Highlights
- Life expectancy at birth for both men and women reached a record high
in 2003, according to new mortality data.
- The number of deaths has been on an upward trend for a number of years,
the result of a growing and aging population. In 2003, a total of 226,169 people
died in Canada, up 1.2% from 223,603 the year before. In the
same period, Canada’s population grew by 1.0%.
- To control for the impact of population aging on death rates, comparisons
over time are made using the “age-standardized mortality rate.”
The age-standardized mortality rate for both sexes fell in 2003 to 586.9 deaths
per 100,000, from 598.2 in 2002. This rate has been dropping
consistently each year since its last peak of 694.9 in 1993.
- Life expectancy at the age of 65, which refers to the number of
years on average that a person aged 65 could expect to live, improved
for both men and women in 2003.
- The infant mortality rate, which represents the number of deaths of
infants less than one year of age, declined to 5.3 deaths per 1,000 live
births from 5.4 deaths in 2002.
- In the last quarter century, the leading causes of death in Canada have
been diseases of the circulatory system and malignant neoplasms, or cancer.
- In 2003, diseases of circulatory system and cancer combined caused
six deaths out of 10 (62.0%).
- Over 55% of all cancer deaths in 2003 are located in
one of five sites: lung, colorectal, female breast, male prostate and pancreas.
- Lung cancer accounted for 26.3% of all cancer deaths in 2003,
the largest proportion for any cancer site. The number of deaths due to lung
cancer rose to 17,374 in 2003, up 1.1% from 2002.
- The age-standardized mortality rate for lung cancer, which eliminates
the impact of an aging population, fell for both sexes combined in 2003 to 47.0 deaths
per 100,000, from 47.8 a year earlier.
- Canada experienced two important infectious disease outbreaks in 2003.
The national mortality data show 511 deaths due to Clostridium difficile
(C. difficile) infection and 30 deaths due to Sudden Acute Respiratory
Syndrome (SARS) of Canadians in 2003. All SARS deaths occurred in Ontario.
|
