Adult Mortality in the Pre-HIV/AIDS Era Cameroon

Martin Bangha, University of Pennsylvania

Many African countries lack conventional data sources for systematic assessment of adult mortality. Substitute techniques developed for measuring adult mortality have not been widely tested and so, are not as widely accepted as the birth histories approach used for childhood mortality analysis. Meanwhile, several rounds of African censuses have progressively collected requisite information for some of these techniques (for instance household deaths 12 months to census) that have not been systematically analyzed. This paper uses data from the 1976 and 1987 censuses to assess the adult mortality situation in Cameroon prior to the onset of HIV/AIDS. More specifically, we test the death distribution techniques of estimating adult mortality in a contemporary African setting where requisite data are believed to be essentially incomplete. The overall picture from the results suggest that the population experienced stagnating adult mortality between mid 1970s and mid 1980s with slight temporary improvement in female adult mortality.