UK Gulf Veterans Mortality

This section provides summary statistics on the causes of deaths that occurred among the UK veterans of the 1990/91 Gulf Conflict between 1 April 1991 and 31 December 2008. Gulf veterans consist of Service personnel deployed to any Gulf state between 1 September 1990 and 30 June 1991 and for the Navy afloat, all personnel aboard a ship east of the Suez canal during that period. The data do not include civilian personnel employed by the MOD (including the Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the NAAFI, MOD civil servants), by other Government Departments, or civilians working for Defence Contractors, the media or charitable and humanitarian organisations. The mortality rates were analysed alongside those of a comparison group. The "Era" comparison group were randomly sampled from all UK Armed Forces personnel in Service on 1 January 1991 who did not deploy to the Gulf. This group is stratified to reflect the socio-demographic and military composition of the Gulf cohort in terms of age, gender, Service (Naval Service, Army, Royal Air Force), officer/other rank status, regular/reservist status, and a proxy measure for fitness.

The single year age distribution among those aged 40 and over has been found to show differences, with those in this age-group deployed to the Gulf generally younger than those in the Era group. Therefore, age adjusted estimates for the Era comparison group have been created by calculating the mortality rate for each single year of age at 1 January 1991 in each calendar year since 1991. This rate was applied to the equivalent numbers in each single year of age at 1 January 1991 and year of death in the Gulf population, from which deaths and emigrations from the UK were subtracted, to calculate the estimated total for each calendar year. These estimated numbers by calendar year were divided by the Gulf population, from which deaths and emigrations from the UK were subtracted, to produce adjusted rates.

Mortality rate ratios were calculated to compare deaths in the Gulf and Era cohorts. The rate ratios provided here were calculated using as denominator the total person-years at risk (the length of time each person has been in the study), taking into account deaths and emigrations from the UK. People who had left the Services and subsequently emigrated were deemed to be lost to follow up because we had no means of knowing if and when they may have died. The mortality rate ratios given here differ marginally from the crude deaths ratio owing to some small differences in the number of person years at risk between the Gulf and Era comparison groups.

The main sources of deaths information are the NHS Information Centre's Central Register and the General Register Office for Scotland. Further information can be found in the National Statistic 1990/1991 Gulf Conflict - UK Gulf Veterans Mortality Data: Causes of Death which is published on the DASA website.