Causes of Death
According to the WHO report, 55% of the 55.4 million fatalities that occurred in the world in 2019 were due to the top 10 causes of death!
The three major categories of cardiovascular (ischemic heart disease, stroke), respiratory (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections), and neonatal conditions — which include birth asphyxia and birth trauma, neonatal sepsis and infections, and preterm birth complications — represent the top causes of death worldwide, in order of the total number of lives lost.
The three main categories of causes of death are:
- Injuries,
- Noncommunicable (chronic) disorders, and
- Communicable (infectious and parasite diseases, as well as maternal, perinatal, and nutritional problems).
The world’s leading causes of death
Seven of the top ten causes of death worldwide in 2019 were non-communicable diseases!
These seven factors, or 80% of the top 10, were responsible for 44% of all deaths. However, 74% of fatalities worldwide in 2019 were caused by noncommunicable diseases as a whole.
Ischemic heart disease, which accounts for 16% of all fatalities worldwide, is the world’s leading cause of death.
This disease has shown the highest increase in deaths since 2000, with an increase of more than 2 million deaths to 8.9 million deaths in 2019.
The second and third most common killers, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respectively, account for 11% and 6% of all deaths.
As the fourth most common cause of death, lower respiratory infections continued to be the most lethal communicable disease in the globe.
The number of deaths has decreased significantly, though; in 2019, it claimed 2.6 million lives, 460 000 fewer than it did in 2000.
Fifth on the list is neonatal conditions. Neonatal conditions killed 2 million infants and young children in 2019, 1.2 million fewer than in 2000.
However, neonatal conditions are one of the categories for which the global drop in mortality in absolute numbers over the previous two decades has been the biggest.
Noncommunicable disease deaths are increasing. Lung, trachea, and bronchial cancer fatalities have increased from 1.2 million to 1.8 million, placing them at number six on the list of main causes of death.
Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia were the seventh most common cause of death in 2019. Women suffer disproportionately. Women account for 65% of dementia and Alzheimer’s mortality worldwide.
Diarrhoeal disorders have had one of the biggest drops in mortality, with 1.5 million fewer deaths worldwide in 2019 compared to 2.6 million in 2000. They rank #8 on this list.
Following a notable percentage growth of 70% since 2000, diabetes has climbed to number nine among the top 10 causes of death. With an 80% increase since 2000, diabetes has also contributed to the top 10 list of increases in male deaths.
There are no longer any diseases on the list that were among the top 10 causes of death in 2000. One of them is HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS-related deaths have decreased by 51% over the past 20 years, falling from the eighth leading cause of death worldwide in 2000 to the nineteenth in 2019.
The 10th largest cause of death worldwide is now kidney illnesses, up from the 13th. From 813,000 in 2000 to 1.3 million in 2019, the death has increased.
Why is it important to understand the cause of death?
Understanding the causes of death will help individuals live better lives. Measuring the number of deaths per year allows us to evaluate how well our healthcare systems work and allocate resources where they are most needed.
For instance, death information can be used to prioritize operations and resource allocation across industries like transportation, food and agriculture, the environment, and health.
Countries must invest in civil registration and vital statistics systems to tally deaths daily and target preventative and treatment efforts, as noted by COVID-19.
It has also shown the inherent fragmentation in data collection systems in most low-income nations, where policymakers still lack trust in their ability to accurately estimate the number of deaths and their causes.
WHO has launched Revealing the Toll of COVID-19: Technical Package for Rapid Mortality Surveillance and Epidemic Response in collaboration with international players to close this crucial gap.
Countries can gather information on the overall number of deaths by day, week, sex, age, and place by offering the necessary instruments and instructions for rapid mortality surveillance.
This information allows health leaders to launch more prompt measures to promote health.
The International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), a digital platform that makes it easier to report timely and accurate data for causes of death so that countries can regularly generate and use health information that complies with international standards, is another way that the World Health Organization develops standards and best practices for data collection, processing, and synthesis.
To improve health and lower deaths and disabilities globally, it is crucial to regularly collect and analyze high-quality data on fatalities and causes of death and statistics on disability, broken down by age, sex, and region.
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