Premature mortality is calculated from the years of potential life lost (YPLL). The use of this indicator provides information about the state of health of the population in East European countries in comparision to West European countries, the USA and Japan, in the late 1980s. The article deals with the possibility of rough calculations of YPLL per 10,000 inabitants, aged 0-64 years, in Serbia and the two provinces, and according to sex. On the basis of these calculations, it is evident that premature mortality in Serbia, just before the war in Yugoslavia, was the same as that in some East Eruopean countries.