Competing Risk Analysis on Leading Causes of Death: Evidence from University of Ghana Hospital

Human beings are exposed to various risks of death such as cancer, heart disease, accidents, stroke, diabetes, AIDS, etc. Therefore, many risks are competing in the life of an individual. Hence, one needs to study the likelihood of dying from a particular risk in the presence of all other risks and the probability of dying when a specific disease is controlled in the population. This paper studies competing risks of three selected causes of death: cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS, and malaria and the interdependency of the three causes of death. Secondary data were extracted from the administrative records unit of the University of Ghana Hospital. The data include the cause of death, age and gender from 1979 to 2019. The study adopted a multiple decrement table where the crude, net and partial probabilities were calculated. The study found that among the three specified diseases, the probability of dying from malaria was higher for children less than five years. Regarding the youth, the probability of dying from HIV/ AIDS in this age range was higher, and in the older ages, the probability of dying from cardiovascular disease was higher. The study also concluded that people would live longer than expected if cardiovascular disease and malaria were controlled in Ghana.

Keywords: Competing risk; Multiple decrements; Crude probability; Net probability; Partial probability