Global Causes of Death

I was discussing with wife Jenny about how the number of suicides when I happened on this data on the causes of death in the world. I thought it was interesting so I graphed it out.  It is surprising that lung diseases (even not including lung cancer) equals heart disease.

The World Health Organization published the number of deaths by cause in 2001. I have combined some catagories and used common language. I did not change the strange spelling "diarrhoeal," but the label "diesease" is actually a mistake.

In developed countries causes of death are moving from acute diseases to chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease. In developing countries, infant deaths, malaria, tuberculosis and sadly measles are still big problems. This is illustrated in this graph from the University of California at Santa Cruz

I always thought that accidents were a bigger cause of death than they are. It would seem that buckling my seatbelt is not that important :-)

See the next post in my global health series.