Diseases caused by an unhealthy lifestyle are now the leading causes of mortality and are now on the rise in Dumaguete City, Oriental Negros, City Health Officer Dr. Ava Vios said.

Records from the City Health Office show that the 10 leading causes of mortality in the city are heart attack, sepsis or infections, cancer, pneumonia, kidney diseases, congestive heart failure, cerebral vascular disease or stroke, tuberculosis, liver cirrhosis and still-birth.

Heart attacks accounted for 336 deaths last year, making it the top killer disease in Dumaguete with a mortality rate of more than 100 percent. Cancer is now the third leading killer disease in the city with a total of 24 fatalities, while lung cancer had the highest death rate followed by liver cancer, colon cancer and ovarian cancer, records further showed.

Vios said infectious diseases like bronchopneumonia are no longer the killer diseases in the city. "Now it's cancer, heart disease or heart attack, hypertensive cardiovascular disease, liver cirrhosis which are lifestyle diseases," she said at the Kapihan forum conducted recently by the Philippine Information Agency.

On the other hand, infectious diseases are still the reason why most people in the city were hospitalized last year.

Based on records Vios presented, the top 10 morbidity diseases are acute respiratory infection, pneumonia, asthma, bronchitis, tuberculosis, acute gastro-enteritis, angina, hypertension, goiter and toxic goiter.

She lauded the efforts of the community-based health maintenance management adopted by Bayawan City, which has succeeded in eradicating tuberculosis as one of its five leading causes of deaths.*RG

back to top