Question NW1198 to the Minister of Health

Reply:

a) Total number of children (0 – 59 months ) who died in public health facilities in each province since 1 January 2013 to December 2022 (ten years period)

Table1: Children who died in public health facilities by province since 1 January 2013 to December 2022 (ten years period)

Organisation unit name	Value
Eastern Cape	25 189
Free State	10 189
Gauteng	38 243
KwaZulu-Natal	38 711
Limpopo	24 744
Mpumalanga	14 226
Northern Cape	5 107
North West	10 300
Western Cape	11 736

Source DHIS

(b) Detailed breakdown of the reasons for each death

Provision of individual cause of children’s death to the house contravenes section35 of the Protection of personal information Act (POPIA), aggregated data on common causes of deaths in children are diarrhoea and pneumonia, including the underlying causes such as severe and moderate acute malnutrition, are collected routinely through the district health information system.

Table 2: Causes and underlying causes of deaths from 1st January 2013 to 31st December 2022

Data name	TOTAL
Pneumonia death under 5 years	10,216
Diarrhoea death under 5 years	9491
Moderate acute malnutrition death under 5 years	1410
Severe acute malnutrition death under 5 years	11172

Source DHIS

(c) Number of deaths that were due to unnatural causes?

Number of child deaths due to unnatural causes in public health facilities may not project accurate picture across the country as final causes are documented following the forensic report analysis. Statistics South Africa, Home Affairs and South African Police Service provides accurate information as shown in the table below.

Table 7: Non-natural deaths from 2013 to 2018

Year	Non-natural deaths	% under-5 deaths
2013	2 452	7.0
2014	2 496	7.3
2015	2 509	7.9
2016	2 364	8.3
2017	2 0 4	7.9
2018	2 199	8.4

  Source: StatsSA

 

END.