A comparison of urban–rural injury mortality rates across two South African provinces, 2007

This study explored urban-rural variations in the magnitude and patterns of fatal injuries in South Africa. The National Injury Mortality Surveillance System was utilised to select South African mortality cases for the 2007 period and a cross-sectional methodology was employed in order to comparatively analyse injury mortality rates in the urban province of Gauteng and the rural province of Mpumalanga. The results reveal several differences in urban-rural injury trends across the two South African provinces. Overall, homicide and unintentional (non-transport) injury death rates were significantly higher in the urban province (40.28/100,000 versus 28.48/100,000; (RR = 1.41 [1.32-1.51]) and 18.30/100,000 versus 13.19/100,000; (RR = 1.39 [1.25-1.54]), respectively), whilst transport-related injury mortality rates were significantly higher in the rural province (66.57/100,000 versus 45.83/100,000; (RR = 0.69 [0.66-0.71])). Such results could be attributed to economical, environmental, and infrastructural differences between urban-rural locations and suggest that injury control strategies could be better targeted to the needs of specific geographic populations in South Africa.