Effective Etiology and geographic distribution of deaths in North Khorasan Province

Awareness of health and hygiene status in any society is among the most important information used in social development and planning programs to provide, maintain and improve health condition of the society, and health development is one of the important achievements of economic and social development in the two recent centuries, resulting in continuous and essential reduction in the death rate. North Khorasan Province is one of the disadvantaged and less developed regions of the country whose components of population status, especially mortality, has been taken into very little consideration. This article seeks to analyze the geographical distribution of etiology of deaths in North Khorasan province to provide authorities and decision makers with guidelines for planning in the fields of health, hygiene and safety. The research method has been retrospective descriptive and analysis of the current situation to investigate the causes of deaths in a 5-year period (1383 to 1388 A. H.) in all deaths recorded in the Province. Categorization of the causes of deaths has been carried out on the basis of the International Classification Deaths (ICD) of the World Health Organization into 17 groups. To study the issue, the authors have benefited from some data, tables, charts and maps along with GIS techniques. The findings show that mortality due to circulatory system diseases, injuries and accidents, cancer and tumors in the province in all the years studied rank first to third, respectively. The town of Farooj is an exception. In this town, respiratory system diseases are the most common causes of deaths. Research results indicate significant difference ‫in causes of deaths according to sex in the Province‫. In other words, the causes of deaths between men and women follow a specific pattern‫. The greatest differences in the patterns of death causes between men and women relates to deaths caused by accidents and the mortality rate 54/4 due to the above-mentioned factors among men is more than those of women‫.