After the epidemiological transition: an evaluation of the mortality due to infectious and parasitic diseases in France and Italy using the multiple cause-of-death approach

Infectious and parasitic diseases nowadays represent a very small share of the total mortality of developed countries which mortality profile is dominated by cancers and diseases of the circulatory system. It has been suggested that, due to old people’s frailty, population aging may result in a fresh upsurge in infectious diseases. Routine indicators of cause-specific mortality are likely to underestimate the role played by these diseases in mortality because 1) the chapter “certain infectious and parasitic diseases“ of the 10th ICD includes only part of these diseases 2) these indicators only account for the underlying cause of the death. In a previous study, we have shown that roughly 3 out of 4 mentions of an infectious/parasitic disease are not selected as the underlying cause. Multiple (both contributing and underlying) cause-of-death data have been used in order to re-evaluate mortality levels attributed to a given condition, as well as to examine what are the most frequent associations of causes involving this condition. We use this approach to analyse the mortality involving infectious/parasitic diseases of France and Italy. The analysis is performed on an extended list of the infectious and parasitic diseases.