South African Medical Research Council's Flagships Awards Project.

As a large proportion of AIDS deaths appear to be classified to AIDS-related conditions, without reference to HIV, interpretation of death statistics in South Africa cannot be made on face value as a large proportion of deaths caused by HIV infection are misclassified.

NCDs contribute to premature mortality in SA, threatening socioeconomic development. While NCD mortality rates have decreased slightly, it is necessary to strengthen prevention and healthcare provision and monitor emerging trends in cause-specific mortality to inform these strategies if the target of 2% annual decline is to be achieved.

No abstract

This open-access article is distributed under Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC 4.0. For several decades, researchers from the South African Medical Research Council have made invaluable contributions towards improving the health of the population through the analysis and interpretation of cause of death data. This article reflects the mortality trends in preand post-apartheid South Africa (SA), and describes efforts to improve vital statistics, innovations to fill data gaps, and studies to estimate the burden of disease after adjusting for data deficiencies. The profound impact of HIV/AIDS, particularly among black African children and young adults, is striking, within a protracted epidemiological transition and the current reversals of multiple epidemics. Over the next 20 years, it will be important to sustain and enhance the country's capacity to collect, analyse and utilise cause of death data. SA needs to support development in the region, harnessing new data platforms and approaches such as including verbal autopsy tools in the official system and improving data linkage.