Study of Un-Natural Deaths of the Patients brought to People's Hospital, Bhopal (a Retrospective Study)

Abstract

Unnatural deaths claim a substantial number of lives in developing countries like India. Among the various types of unnatural deaths, RTA account for majority of deaths followed by burn, poisoning, fall from height, animal bite and hanging[1]. Increasing population, urbanization, increased financial burden, educational and social stress, all may contribute to a big proportion of unnatural deaths in our country. Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh having a population of 2368145 (Bhopal district), out of 1914339 in urban and 453806 in rural areas. The male female ratio is 910 females per 1000 males. The crude death rate is 5.8/1000, out of which 5.4 of urban and 7.6 of rural [2]. In the present study which was conducted from 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2012, the total number of deaths were 794, out of them 152 (19.14%) deaths were unnatural. The females 83 (54.60%) outnumbered the males 69 (45.39%). The commonest cause of unnatural death was burn 71 cases (46.71%), out of them 63 (88.73%) were females and 8 (11.26%) were males (all are accidental). Out of total 63 female burn deaths 44 (69.84%) were homicidal, the commonest age group affected in female burn is 16-30 years (61.97%). The second commonest cause of unnatural death was RTA in 50 (32.89%) cases, out of them males were 41 (82%) and females were 9 (18%). 20 (40%) cases were in the age group of 16-30 years, out of total 50 RTA deaths. Other causes of unnatural death were poisoning 17 (11.18%), fall from height 12 (7.89%), hanging 1 (0.65%) and assault 1 (0.65%). Language: en