Forty-five years of cause-specific mortality trends in Moldova

Over the last forty-five years, Moldova failed to progress in life expectancy at birth. Disregarding the wide fluctuations linked to the 1985 anti-alcohol campaign and the social and economic crisis of the 1990s, the general trend in life expectancy is stagnating among males and slightly improving among females. Interpreting recent mortality changes in the light of long-term trends provides an insight into the reasons of the health crisis affected Moldova like other former USSR republics from the mid-1960s. However, the periodic changes in classification of causes of death break the continuity of death time series. To assure their consistency we used a special reconstruction method (Meslé and Vallin, INED). Moreover, unlike other European countries of the former USSR, the quality of death registration in Moldova in infancy and at older ages for the 1960s and 1970s is rather questionable. The analysis of cause-specific mortality trends will be produced here after corrections for under-registration. After a long period of deterioration mixed with large fluctuations as in other former USSR countries, the recent favorable trends give hope but not yet the proof of a start of sustainable positive trajectory.