According to the results of the Mortality and Causes of Death released by Statistician-General Pali Lehohla in Pretoria on Tuesday‚ diabetes and cerebrovascular diseases are the second and third largest killers respectively.
Although TB maintained its number one spot in the causes of death‚ non-communicable diseases disease continue their rise in the rankings of top 10 leading causes of death with diabetes moving from third position in 2014 to second position in 2015.
Non-communicable diseases formed 60% of the ten leading underlying natural causes of death.
In addition to diabetes‚ cerebrovascular diseases‚ other forms of heart diseases‚ hypertensive diseases‚ chronic lower respiratory diseases and ischemic heart diseases contributed to the rise in non-communicable diseases.
According to Lehohla‚ the continued rise in non-communicable diseases has been fuelled by males and females aged 65 and above.
