Cause_Limp v1.0: A Windows-based software for analysing data on multiple causes of death

Abstract

Background Cause_Limp v1.0 is a windows-based program for analysing data on multiple causes of death. The software comes along with South African mortality data for the period, 1997-2005. It is freely available on the Internet. Implementation Cause_Limp v1.0 comprises seven programs. Each program comes with a standard input selection screen. The main variables in those screens are; age, sex, years of analysis, province of residence, province of death and cause(s) of death. All the programs count the multiple mentions of selected cause(s) of death, filtered according to user’s requirements and produce different outputs depending on the dimension requested. Conclusions The free availability of a multiple-cause program to accompany the South African data should stimulate multiple-cause analysis of South African data. This is primarily of relevance to South Africa and secondarily of relevance to research on disease associations and causation in general.