Multimorbidity and Mortality due to Chagas Disease in Brazil between 2000 and 2023

Ana Maria Nogales Vasconcelos, Universidade de Brasilia
Luana Barreto, Universidade de Brasília
Valéria Fechine, Universidade de Brasília
Marcelo Pereira de Souza Fleury, Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG)
Leandro Correia, Universidade de Brasilia

Over the past 70 years, Brazil has undergone significant economic, social, and demographic transformations that have substantially impacted the population's lifestyle and living conditions. Between 2000 and 2023, 63% of deaths occurred in people over 60 years old, and except for the pandemic years (2000 and 2021), chronic noncommunicable diseases accounted for more than 75% of the causes of death in this age group. However, given the enormous inequalities historically prevalent in the country, Chagas disease is still a critical public health problem, especially in the country's endemic areas in the Southeast, Northeast, and Central-West. The objective of the present communication is to analyze mortality from Chagas Disease in Brazil from the perspective of multiple causes, considering the disease's chronicity process and its association with chronic non-communicable diseases among deaths over 60 years of age. We used microdata from the Mortality Information System and considered all mentions of causes in the death certificate with code B57 in any position of the death certificate. The causes associated with Chagas are cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, diabetes mellitus, neoplasms, COVID-19, and Alzheimer's, highlighting the complex multi-morbidity of the process of illness death.

Keywords: Mortality and Longevity, Civil Registration and Vital Statistics, Population Ageing, Population and Development

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