Heart disease and dementia leading cause of death
Heart disease and dementia are the leading causes of death on the Peninsula, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
The institute has released deaths data covering a period from 2015 to 2019 for the two "level two" statistical areas which cover the Peninsula, at the request of Peninsula News.
Normally, the data is only available for the level three area which is the whole of the former Gosford local government area.
"Deaths data are a vital measure of a population's health, and provides information on patterns of diseases that cause death, by population groups and over time," the Institute stated in releasing the data.
The data shows that there were 451 deaths on the Peninsula in 2019, 234 male (51.9 per cent) and 217 female (48.1 per cent).
This compared to a split nationally of 52.2 per cent male and 47.8 per cent female for the same year.
The median age at death was 82.0 years (81.7 years nationally), with a median age for men of 77.0 years (78.8 years nationally) and 85.0 years for women (84.8 years nationally).
The five leading causes accounted for more than 40 per cent of all registered Peninsula deaths (35.7 per cent nationally).
For the years 2015 to 2019, the leading cause of death on the Peninsula was ischaemic heart disease, 286 deaths (12 per cent) of a total of 2344 for the five-year period.
Dementia was the second leading cause of death with 199 deaths (8.5 per cent).
Cerebrovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer were the next leading causes.
Influenza and pneumonia was the 10th leading cause.
Leading causes differed substantially by gender, with the leading cause of male death being coronary heart disease (13.6 per cent) and the leading cause of female death being dementia (11.0) per cent.
Coronary heart disease was the second leading cause for women at 10.8 per cent, while dementia was only the fourth leading cause for men at 6.1 per cent.
Nationally, dementia was the second leading cause of death for men in 2019.
The second and third leading causes for men were cerebrovascular disease and COPD, with the fifth leading cause being lung cancer.
For women on the Peninsula, the same diseases were third, fourth and fifth leading causes on the Peninsula.
Prostate cancer was sixth on the list for men (4.0 per cent) and breast cancer was eighth on the list for women (2.5 per cent).
SOURCE:
Media release, 24 Jun 2021
Elise Guy, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare