Tracking poison ingestion deaths for South Africa: The need for access to timely reliable data

Abstract

The President of South Africa addressed the nation on 15 November 2024 regarding the rise in food-borne illnesses and related child deaths. In the absence of a clear profile of injury deaths from official cause-of-death data, we used empirical, nationally representative surveys from 2017 and 2020/21 to analyse poisoning deaths. For children (aged 0-17 years), deaths from poison ingestion increased in 2020/21 for Gauteng Province, and became more prominent in KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape and Mpumalanga provinces. Adults (≥18 years) showed similar developments, but on a larger scale. Among children in 2020/21, poison ingestion deaths were mostly unintentional (274 cases). Adults had higher proportions for suicide-related poisoning, but unintentional poisoning deaths (791 cases) accounted for 43.8% in males and 32.5% in females. Overall, pesticides were the most common cause of poisoning deaths in children (42%) and adults (29%). A promising intervention is that suspected agricultural or stock remedy poisoning, as a notifiable medical condition (NMC), should now be reported to the NMC Surveillance System within 24 hours. For a rapid public health response to the country’s burden of disease, we call on the government for a collaborative approach, to improve the quality and timeliness of death notification data, and to implement electronic capturing of deaths nationally.