What Is The Leading Cause Of Death In The Kawarthas?

KAWARTHA LAKES-A new public health dashboard is providing insight into the overall health and deaths of local residents.

According to the Haliburton Kawartha Pine Ridge District Health Unit (HKPR)Mortality Profile Dashboard 2582 people died in 2022 in the district which includes Kawartha Lakes, Northumberland and Haliburton.

The number one cause of death locally is cancer, followed by heart disease and dementia/alzheimers.

The Mortality Profile Dashboard launched in August and presents the number and rate of deaths occurring among residents of the HKPR District Health Unit area. Overall mortality, premature mortality, potential years of life lost, avoidable mortality, mortality by select causes, and cancer mortality, are reported by year. The latest data available is for the year 2022.

According to the data, 34% of those deaths occurred before the age of 75 and are classified as premature mortality.  15.6% were from what is classified as preventable causes and 6.7 % from treatable causes.

The overall mortality rate in our area was slightly lower than the provincial average. Provincially the average is 714 per 100,000 and local the number is 619 per 100,000.

Nine children under the age of five died in our area in 2022. There were four infant deaths, three deaths in kids between 28 days and one year and two between 1 and five years old.

“For children under 5 the vast majority of deaths were perinatal conditions, this includes things like complications of pregnancy, labour and delivery as well as respiratory and cardiovascular diseases that are specific to the perinatal period. For example neonatal cardia failure those would all be considered perinatal conditions.” said Meghan Bowman, Epidemiologist, HKPR told Kawartha 411 News.

Bowman says those numbers aren’t statistically different from the rest of the province.

There were 490 avoidable deaths in the HKPR region from 2017-2022 in residents under 75 years of age. Avoidable deaths are those that are potentially treatable or potentially preventable.

622 people died of cancer between 2017 and 2022. 33 people died of accidental poisoning in 2022, 99 people died from falls, 48 people died from the flu/pneumonia, 282 people died from heart disease, 20 died from intentional self harm and 46 died from diabetes.

Click here for the full dashboard: https://www.hkpr.on.ca/inspections-data-and-reports/public-health-data/mortality-profile-dashboard/dashboard-mortality-profile/