The hospital mortality rate in our centre es 2.34% (264 deaths from a total of 11,336 discharges between 1991 and 1993). The most frequent causes are acute myocardial infarction and cerebrovascular accidents, followed in descending order by pneumonia, chronic bronchitis, congestive heart failure, upper GI haemorrhage, GI tumours, liver cirrhosis, lung tumours and arrhythmias. Our analysis reflects a mortality pattern of a rural population with an age pyramid in which 52% of the patients are older than 45 years. The pattern also reflects the little impact of accidents on our mortality. A 87% of the deaths were older than 65 years with a male to female ratio of 1, 6 and a Swaroop index of 93% and 94% for males and females respectively.