Masculine mortality in the State of Bahia, Northeast and Southeast regions of Brazil during the period 2000 to 2009

Abstract

In trend studies carried out in different countries, the incidence or prevalence rates of diseases and health problems that raise the mortality among men, such as
cancer, heart diseases and external causes, indicate a higher vulnerability of men when compared with the women population. In some cases there is even the inversion of the pattern along the years, worsening the men´s health profile, widening, in this way, the historical differences in mortality among men and women. The aim of this article is to evaluate the men’s mortality trend in the State of Bahia, in the Northeast and Southeast regions of Brazil, in the period 2000 to 2009. It is an ecologic study, descriptive, temporal series type, in which was evaluated the trend of mortality rates of men of fifteen years or older, according to race/skin color.
The death causes were grouped according to the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10). Secondary data of the Mortality Information System (Sistema de Informação de Mortalidade - SIM). The black men died mainly by external causes, whereas the white men died mainly because of diseases of the circulatory system. Throughout the studied historical series, the States of the Northeast tended to show a linear growth of the homicide mortality rates, redominantly, to all the race/color segments, while the States of the Southeast showed a decrease to all these segments. It was observed that in the State of Espírito Santo the average homicide mortality rate grew 27 times more to the black masculine population in relation to the white masculine population. The observed findings may subsidy the Men’s Health Policy as well as the formulation and implementation of public policies aimed to the reduction of the masculine mortality in the studied areas.