Mortality surveillance is a central aspect of the information required to identify the health needs of a community, monitor progress in the implementation of programmes and track changes over time. Although cause of death data have been collected in the Cape Town etropole for more than 100 years, the system has been revamped in recent years to provide the City with more relevant information. The first report covered data for the year 2001 and provided insight into the mortality differentials between sub-districts as well as entifying the major causes of premature mortality, which were characterized as a quadruple burden of disease (infectious diseases; injuries, especially among young adults; non-communicable diseases later in life; and the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic). The second report covered a detailed analysis of the cause of death data for the Cape Town Metropole for the period 2001 to 2004. This is the third report and covers the period 2001 to 2006 (data for 2005 omitted since they were incomplete). The information in this report has been collected directly from the local offices of the Department of Home Affairs and supplemented by information collected from the local mortuaries. The cause of death coding was done by trained clerks at the City of Cape Town. Deaths were analysed by age, cause and gender for 8 new sub-districts from 2003 until 2006. Premature mortality and age-standardised rates were calculated and compared across sub-districts. Temporal trends are given for major cause groupings. Up-to-date population estimates for each subdistrict
and estimates of the completeness of death registration were calculated.