Abstract

ORTA CABRERA, Rómulo. La mortalidad prematura en Venezuela: 1970-1995. Gac Méd Caracas [online]. 2002, vol.110, n.1, pp.54-62. ISSN 0367-4762.

The statistics of lost potential years of life speak of a serious problem of public health that, however, it doesn't constitute a priority for the international organisms that design the fundamental orientations of population's politics and development; the priorities of attention concentrate on the maternal and infantile population and in the programs related with the reproductive health, without assigning a lot of interest to the fact that it is among the population with ages between 15 and 64 years in the one that this loss acquires impressive dimensions. In Venezuela, the population that died at ages inside that interval added in 1970 a 474 819 of lost potential years of life; in 1995 that figure reached the 928 568 years, and however, for the year 2000, the programs of the Ministry of Health and Social Development privileged the infantile and maternal attention and the distribution of contraceptives.

Keywords : Mortality; Lost potential years of life.