4704.0 - The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010

ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 19/12/2011 Final

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Contents >> Mortality

	MORTALITY
	This article is part of a comprehensive series released as The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

KEY MESSAGES

In the period from 2006 to 2010 in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and the Northern Territory:

the largest number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths were registered in Queensland (3,031) followed by New South Wales (2,903)
mortality rates for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population were higher than those for the non-Indigenous population in each age group
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander infant mortality rate was nearly twice the non-Indigenous rate
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child mortality rate (aged 1-4 years) was more than twice the non-Indigenous rate.

This article provides an overview of mortality data for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. Care should be exercised when analysing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths data due to quality issues, such as under-identification of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths, and uncertainties inherent in estimating and projecting the size and structure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population over time (Endnote 1). See the section on 'Understanding the data quality issues' for more information.

Mortality can be used as an indicator of a population’s health and access to medical facilities. Mortality can be measured in a number of different ways. This article includes crude death rates, age-specific death rates, age-standardised death rates and infant and child mortality rates.

Topics covered in this article include:

ENDNOTES

1. For more information see the Explanatory Notes from Deaths, Australia, 2010 (cat.no.3302.0).

This section contains the following subsection :
Understanding the data quality issues
Overview of 2006-2010 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths
Age structure and age at death
Infant and child mortality