Avoidable mortality in Poland in 1999-2008

Wiktoria Wroblewska, Warsaw School of Economics

Poland belongs to the countries of the most favourable life expectancy rates in the Central and Eastern Europe. Since the beginning of the transformation in Poland, a systematic growth in life expectancy has been observed for both sexes. From 1991 to 2010, life expectancy at birth increased by 6,2 years for men and 5,5 years for women and in 2010 it was 72,1 years for men and 80,6 years for women. It is clear that the positive changes recorded in the state of the population’s health and the mortality rate in Poland are connected with the ongoing processes of deep political and social transformation, including the transforming Polish health care system since 1999. In this study we examined mortality in Poland from 1999 to 2008 from avoidable deaths. We used list of causes of death divided into three groups: treatable disease, preventable diseases and ischemic heart disease (Newey et al. 2004). Mortality data for Poland were obtained from the WHO mortality files using the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (WHO 2011). The contribution of medical care to changes in mortality trends was estimated by decomposing life expectancy by age and cause of death. The analyses were based on temporary life expectancy between birth and age 75 [e(0-75)]. Chiang’s method was used for constructing abridged life tables, and Arriaga’s method was used for decomposition by cause of death of the differences between values of life expectancy in 1999 and 2008 in Poland. The findings indicate that changes in the health care system were associated with improvements in life expectancy in Poland. The avoidable mortality decreased considerably from 1999 to 2008, especially for women. Although the improvement in temporary life expectancy there remains potential for further progress in avoidable premature deaths in Poland.