UK Gulf Veterans Mortality Data: Causes of Death - 1990/1991 Gulf Conflict

Main Category: Veterans / Ex-Servicemen
Article Date: 17 Jan 2005 - 14:00 PDT

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This Statistical Notice provides summary statistics on the causes of deaths among the UK veterans of the 1990/91 Gulf Conflict between 1 April 1991 and 31 December 2004. The mortality rates of 53,409 UK Gulf veterans were analysed alongside those of a comparison group, the Era cohort. The Era comparison group consists of 53,143 UK Armed Forces personnel of similar age, gender, Service, regular/reservist status and rank who were in Service on 1st January 1991 but did not deploy to the Gulf.

The findings include those who died while in Service and those who died after they had left the Services. The statistics are based on deaths reported to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) up to 31st December 2004, updating the previous notice for deaths reported up to 30 June 2004 released on 14th July 2004.

Further information on deaths that may have occurred during the period 1st April 1991 to 31st December 2004, reported to the MoD after the release of this publication, will be added to future publications.

Since the publication of the previous notice, we have examined further trends in some cause-groups. We have found differences between the Gulf and Era cohort age groups: although each Era cohort age group was randomly sampled to have the same size as the corresponding Gulf cohort age group, those who were aged 40 years or over on 1 January 1991 who deployed to the Gulf were often younger than those sampled for the Era cohort. We have therefore adjusted all our figures for the Era cohort to the single years of age structure of the Gulf cohort, as at 1 January 1991, to ensure appropriate comparisons. The main impact is to slightly reduce the previously noticed excess of deaths in the Era cohort caused by disease-related conditions, and cancer in particular, increasing the similarity between the two cohorts. The effect on accidental deaths is minimal.

DASA will make age-adjusted figures for previous versions of this notice available on their web-site in the near future.

Key points

There were 687 deaths among the Gulf veterans up to the 31 December 2004, an increase of 24 since the last release in July 2004. There were an estimated 688 deaths in the age-adjusted Era comparison group up to 31 December 2004.

The 687 deaths among Gulf veterans compares with approximately 1,085 deaths which would have been expected in a similar sized cohort taken from the general population of the UK with the same age and gender profile.

Issued by
Defence Analytical Services Agency (DASA)
Ensleigh
Bath
BA1 5AB
UK

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Internet
1990/1991 Gulf Conflict - UK Gulf Veterans Mortality Data: Causes of Death, 31 Dec 2008 (published: 31 Mar 2009)

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