Coronary heart diseases still top cause of death in PH; COVID-19 climbs up to 4th spot

MANILA, Philippines — Despite two surges of the COVID-19 pandemic battering the Philippines, coronary heart disease remains the top leading cause of death among Filipinos from January 2021 to September 2021, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).

However, the same PSA data dated Saturday, December 18, also showed that deaths ascertained to be caused by COVID-19 went up from just 16th in 2020 to fourth, while unidentified but COVID-19 related deaths are at the eighth spot.

Deaths confirmed to be due to COVID-19 accounted for 34,361 or 7.0 percent — a 468.7 percent jump compared to 2020’s 6,042 deaths or 1.3 percent.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 related deaths with the virus unconfirmed were the seventh-highest causes of deaths at 16,397 or 3.3 percent — also a slight 1.1 percent jump from 2020 numbers which was at 16,219 or 3.6 percent.

According to PSA, after coronary heart diseases which accounted for 91,152 or 18.5 percent of the deaths recorded, cerebrovascular diseases (49,063 or 9.9 percent) came next, followed by neoplasms or cancers (42,633 or 8.6 percent).

Deaths due to coronary heart diseases also increased by 18.7 percent compared to figures in 2020, during the same time frame.  Also, cerebrovascular diseases are now at second, increasing from the previous third ranking.

“The top three causes of death in the country from January to September of 2021 were ischaemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, and neoplasms.  Incidentally, these were also the leading causes of death in the same period in 2020 with some deviations in the ranking,” PSA said in the report.

“During the first nine months of 2021, ischaemic heart diseases were the leading cause of death with 91,152 cases or 18.5 percent of the total deaths in the country. This indicated an increase of about 18.7 percent from the 76,783 deaths or 16.9 percent of the total deaths in the same period of 2020,” it added.

The following ailments round up the top 10 leading causes of death in the country:

• diabetes (5th, 32,057 or 6.5 percent)
• hypertensive diseases (6th, 26,600 or 5.4 percent)
• pneumonia (7th, 22,158 or 4.5 percent)
• COVID-19 but virus not identified (8th, 16,397 or 3.3 percent)
• other heart diseases (9th, 16,186 or 3.3 percent)
• chronic lower respiratory diseases (10th, 15,018 or 3.0 percent)

PSA clarified though that the data gathered may differ from the final count, and with the Department of Health’s records, especially as Filipinos abroad who died, were not yet included.

“The information presented includes deaths that occurred from January to September 2021 based on data files received by the PSA – Civil Registration Service (CRS) from the PSOs  (Philippine Statistics Offices) as of 29 October 2021. Thus, the figures presented herein are still preliminary and may differ at the final count,” PSA said.

“Figures in this release, specifically for deaths due to COVID-19, may differ from the one released by the [DOH] because the figures in this release were obtained from the certificates of death particularly the descriptions written on the medical certificate portion therein as reviewed by the health officer of the local government unit concerned,” it added.

Currently, the country is seeing a downward trend in COVID-19 infections.  As of Sunday, DOH only recorded 203 new cases, while 395 new recoveries pushed the active infection count to 9,729.