Category: mortality

Counting the true toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand

Michael Plank

How many people died because of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer depends on more than just counting reported COVID-19 deaths.

In our recent study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, we looked at a key statistic called excess mortality – the number of deaths above what we would have expected if there hadn’t been a pandemic. Excess mortality helps us to measure the overall impact of the pandemic, not just from COVID-19 itself but also from things like delayed medical care or the side effects of lockdowns.

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Proposing a new indicator to assess health disparities: measuring inequalities in causes of death

Iñaki Permanyer and Júlia Almeida Calazans

Policymakers and scholars are increasingly interested in monitoring and curbing health inequalities. Much is known about the main causes of death and how mortality has been shifting from most deaths around the world being caused by communicable diseases towards most being due to non-communicable causes.

However, less is known about the heterogeneity in these causes of death. Are people in some countries dying from an increasingly varied set of causes? Measuring how ‘similar’ or ‘dissimilar’ the different causes of death are can help us understand global health inequalities and patterns of mortality.

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Regular exercise, even in polluted areas, can lower risk of cancer mortality

Yacong Bo and Xiang Qian Lao

Regular exercise is recognised as providing significant lifestyle-related protection against non-communicable diseases. It can also reduce the likelihood of cardiovascular disease, cancer and premature death. By contrast, long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) can increase the likelihood of respiratory and cardiovascular disease and certain cancers, leading to premature death.

Outdoor exercise might increase the inhalation and deposition of air pollutants, potentially counteracting its beneficial effects. Evaluation of this risk–benefit relationship has become an important public health concern because more than 91% of the global population lives in areas where air quality fails to meet the 2005 World Health Organization guidelines.

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