Deaths, causes, and their frequency among Saudi citizens: A descriptive analysis of data from the 2017 Population...

The number of deaths, causes, and frequency measures are crucial in determining the health of a country's population.

The current study aimed to estimate deaths, causes of death, and their frequency for Saudi nationals in 2017.

In this descriptive study, we used data from the 2017 Population Characteristics Survey (n = 14,215,901) and performed secondary data analysis between November 2021 and February 2022. We used a total number of survey samples to compute the deaths. The cause of death was determined by dividing the total number of fatalities according to sex. We calculated the overall population-, administrative region-, and gender-wise percentages, rates per 1,000 people per year, the ratios for mortality, and their reasons.

There were 58,915 (0.4%) total deaths, including 0.3% and 0.2% deaths among females and males, respectively. The illness was the most frequent cause of mortality (46.5% or 465 per 1,000 population/year), notably in women (52.5% or 525 per 1,000 population/year). The fatality rate was higher due to traffic accidents (a total of five in every female and four males in every female).

In 2017, illness-especially in women-was the cause of death. Road car accidents had a high mortality rate, especially among males. Saudi Arabia has lower death rates than other Arab nations and high-, moderate-, and low-income nations.