Highlights
This report presents information on diabetes-related deaths in Australia between 2001 and 2003 using death certificate data. The term ‘diabetes-related deaths’ is used in this analysis to refer to deaths where diabetes was considered to have been either the primary (underlying), or a contributory (associated) cause of death when the underlying cause of death was a commonly recognised complication of diabetes.
Over the period 2001–2003 there were 20,908 diabetes-related deaths registered for people aged 25 years or over in Australia; this represents 5.4% of all deaths registered over this period. Diabetes was recorded as the underlying cause of death in 9,772 of these cases, representing 2.5% of all deaths registered during 2001–2003 in Australia.
The average annual diabetes-related death rate for people aged 25 years or over for 2001–2003 was around 68 per 100,000 in males and 41 per 100,000 in females.
Deaths from diabetes-related causes became more common with age, from less than 1 death per 100,000 in those aged less than 35 years to an average of around 680 deaths per 100,000 in those aged 85 years and over in 2001–2003.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were eight times as likely as other Australians to die of diabetes-related causes in 2001–2003. Further, they were almost 12 times as likely as other Australians to have diabetes recorded as the underlying cause of death.
People from remote areas were more likely than those from regional areas or major cities to die from diabetes-related causes in 2001–2003
