Talk:List of causes of death by rate

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 02:41, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Color coding in charts

The use of colors for some categories in these charts and not others is quite confusing. ("Lower respiratory tract infections" is pink, "Tuberculosis" is blue, etc.) Could we please either very clearly indicate in the article what these colors mean or remove them altogether? Thanks. -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 23:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

I think it's supposed to denote causes that are in the top 10 of developed and developing countries alike. Fvasconcellos (t·c) 18:03, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, that looks plausible. If anyone knows for sure, could this explanation please be clearly added to the article? -- 201.37.230.43 (talk) 05:06, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Using a single colour would eliminate some confusion, although I think this would be better denoted with an asterisk than a coloured box. twirligig^{Leave one! ⋄ Check me out!} 17:04, 18 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree that the color coding is not terribly clear. But think that it is worth-while to in some way indicate items that appear in both charts (and in the lower chart, items that are in left and right charts).

Using one color would not make connection between left and right halves of bottom chart as clear.

Added a note to try to explain what the color means, until we come up with clearer way to connect items. Zodon (talk) 21:16, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

The note does not seem to reflect accurately the way tinted backgrounds are applied.218.250.192.84 (talk) 07:13, 22 April 2019 (UTC)

Hunger mortality statistics - POV and possibly wrong

The section on hunger mortality statistics is presented in a misleading way as to exaggerate the problem. It simply isn't true that "X number of people die every second" from hunger, but phrasing things that way makes the problem sound so much worse. This is not the way to write a neutral article, regardless of the issue at hand. And the idea that hunger would be the main, direct cause of 58 % of all deaths world-wide is absolutely ridiculous. That part needs to be rewritten.

The actual mortality numbers should be presented first, not some made-up time calculation. It should be explained that hunger as mortality cause is a secondary cause, and not a direct one etc. After this one may possibly relate the problem of hunger to other aspects of human life and problems, to put it in perspective. But it is wrong to start out with the most sensationalist framing possible.

Moreover, I have checked three of the provided sources for the quotes on hunger mortality [1], [2] and [3].

• None of these sources are links to studies or data on the actual subject. Instead they are all political documents issued within the UN as part of a campaign for a "Right to Food".
• One source is a cross-reference to the Ziegler document, a document which itself provides no source.
• None of these source documents provide any foot notes, sources or references themselves; the numbers are simply in there without references!

The numbers have no real source in these documents. They seem exaggerated and are badly presented. In the starvation article I removed them until an adequate source is provided. In this article there are additional sources that I haven't checked yet, so I'll leave the stuff for now (but with appropriate templates). Koyos (talk) 17:22, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

I'd tend to agree with you that this information needs to be checked, but I'm not sure if any definitive data exists.

The problem with malnutrition is that it's effects on mortality are indirect - while deaths due to starvation can be recorded, deaths due to other causes that would not have happened had the individual not been malnourished are MUCH harder to quantify. For example, if an individual's immune system is diminished due to malnutrition, they may be much less likely to survive a bout of diarrhoea than if they were healthy. But the exact relationships tend to be population specific, depending on disease prevalence, general health status, cultural practices and genetic makeup of the area. I'm sure that these estimates came from an attempt to quantify this, but without the data on how it was done it is next to useless.

Perhaps we could take another approach? I know that there was a 2004 Global Burden of Disease estimate of risk factors for mortality (including some aspects of malnutrition) - would it be a better idea to provide a related list of risk factor prevalence? It may be worthwhile to see if the figures for mortality have been updated at the same time.Interrapax (talk) 00:42, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

All criticisms here are valid. Shouldn't we take out the deaths by "hunger/malnutrition" percentages from the table? At the very least because the whole rest of the table has the same source, and this new extra data doesn't mix with it. I mean, now the numbers add up to 158%. Diego Vieitez (talk) 06:29, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

You simply cannot insert secondary causes of death into this chart. It is impossible to quantify secondary causes. To the contrary, autopsies can definitively show the primary cause of death, which is all that is being referenced in the chart. If you are going to include hunger as a cause of death with regards to other primary causes of death, like TB, then it stands to logic that you must include other factors as well. Factors would include things like, access to clean water, stable living conditions, vaccinations (or lack thereof), poverty etc. Unless some sort of documented evidence exists showing all of the underlying socioeconomic and living conditions related to a death, then it is simply erroneous data that seems to be implanted to achieve an objective other than ascertaining the facts. To say that because many of these deaths occur in third world nations, and hunger is a problem in third world nations, therefor hunger is the true cause of death, is a logical fallacy and a gross oversimplification. Poverty is also a problem in most third world nations, so you could just as easily say that poverty is the leading cause of death, especially since poverty generally is the primary cause of hunger in the first place. For the record, I am not supporting adding poverty as a cause of death, simply making a point. Brendan Eagleton — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.54.177.86 (talk) 21:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me, but the UN does not do political campaigns, you equate them to the Republican Party and that is not the same. These people are doctors in their respective areas and they are using the data to present to you, their findings. Of course they won't present you with raw data, they are giving you charts and that is based on their information which is much better than any you could get, except for maybe the World Bank and IMF, if that. We have no right to dispute the neutrality of their findings, simply because we don't "believe" in hunger to be one of the main causes of death in our planet, but it is so:

"Undernourishment and deficiencies in essential vitamins and minerals cost more than 5 million children their lives every year." FAO (2004, p.8).

"these micronutrient deficiencies significantly increase the risk of death and severe illness." FAO (2004, p.9).

"Overall, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 3.7 million deaths in 2000 could be attributed to underweight. Deficiencies in three key micronutrients – iron, vitamin A and zinc – each caused an additional750,000 to 850,000 deaths." Also FAO (2004, p.9)

There is no neutrality to dispute here except for political purposes, which is the real reason you guys are disputing it in the first place. Cease and desist please! --Albalma (talk) 14:24, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Old Age?

Does anyone know how many people just die of old age, or have these all been placed in other categories now? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Azoundria (talk • contribs) 20:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

May I ask how is that related to Wikipedia issues? NCurse _work 19:20, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

No.1 cause of Death

I did change the no.1 cause of Death to HUNGER. The reference cited supports it as the underline cause of the majority of the subsequent fatal diseases. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjald (talk • contribs) 21:04, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

While that is true, the main table was compiled interily by just one source. Putting hunger on that table like that warps it and the percentagens, and is just a bad methodology. Therefore, I took out hunger from the table but left a note about it at the bottom and kept the links. I think it's more precise like that and keeps all the information. Diego Vieitez (talk) 21:17, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

There are a multitude of conditions that people can have that may contribute to, but are not the overall final cause of death. It is the final cause of death that these tables are meant to represent, not the secondary ones. Why is hunger special as a secondary cause? Why not mention all the combining or contributory factors, such as underlying mental disorders that can contribute to deaths such as road accidents, or that other diseases such as cancer may cause suicides or road accidents? What causes hunger? Deaths by hunger may be caused by mental disorders such as anorexia, or cancers of the throat or stomach, or as the result of violence. You cant go back and discount the statistics by saying some or all deaths may have been caused by something else other than the primary cause. You end up at a position where none of the statistics are meaningful because everything may cause everything else. If there is a proviso to the given statistics on primary cause it shouldn't mention hunger specifically. It should merely state that sometimes there are contributory factors to deaths that are not mentioned in the tables, because the article is about the primary cause of death, not all the potential or possible contributing factors to those deaths. Mdw0 (talk) 06:56, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Anorexia and mental disorders have minimal impact on deaths that occur from the result of poor nutrition and outright starvation. The vast amount of world deaths are in third-world areas where food shortages cause almost all mortality. - Chance — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.122.219 (talk) 11:47, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Different country rates

It would be interesting if this broke down causes of death into rates per different parts of the world. Starvation might be a worldwide leading cause of death, but it is not in my home country (the United Kingdom) where heart disease, cancer and cerebrovascular accidents are the three leading causes of death. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 23:26, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

forgot #3 cause

Prescription Drugs! — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[Special:Contributions/64.53.161.148|64.53.161Seek2015 (talk) 05:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC).148]] (talk) 17:22, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

More recent data

The WHO website links to more up to date data that could be used in this article.

Link to website. Data from 2008.

--92.160.201.223 (talk) 20:08, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

The WHO has data from 2012, for example, on causes of death in developed and developing countries. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/index1.html Sorry to be a lazy poster but I don't know how to update the graphs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.232.203.148 (talk) 20:27, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Accuracy of WHO table

The table sourced to World Health Organization [4] has been in the article from the very beginning in 2006 [5], but the data doesn't seem to match, even nearly. For the start, the "All" column is supposed to be the sum of Male and Female deaths, but in the article it looks like an average, which does not make any sense to me. But even the numbers do not match; for example, the WHO pdf states that cardiovascular diseases take 8.12 (m.) + 8.63 (f.) million lives; our table says 25.9 + 27.8 M. WHO table gives the total of 57 M deaths worldwide; our article 95+87. The figures are nowhere near??! No such user (talk) 09:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

You have misinterpreted the article's table: it presents mortality rates rather than number of deaths. For instance, the 8,120,000 male cardiovascular deaths occurred among a population of 3,131,052,000 males (top of WHO table), which gives a mortality rate (8120/3131052) of 259.3 per 100,000 of the population.

I'd guess you didn't notice the line saying "Deaths per 100,000 per year" just above the table; that's not surprising. That description used to be in the table header, directly over the righthand three columns (which are the only columns it applies to). Somebody apparently edited it out of that location and left it floating above the table. I'll make an edit to try to fix this up in order to make the table at least as clear as it used to be. --R. S. Shaw (talk) 21:57, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I see, thanks. A couple of additional points:

• Is 1/100,000 some kind of standard proportion unit in the field, or is it just chosen randomly? I'm inclined to change it to 1/1,000,000, which is to me much more intuitive and better scalable.
• Currently, sorting of so organized table is a bit awkward, because there are groups and sub-groups bundled on the same level. I don't have an idea for a cleaner solution, though.

No such user (talk) 05:03, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Mortality is usually reported in either 1/1,000 or 1/100,000 (although occasionally 1/million is used). Per thousand is often used for total deaths and for infant mortality; for wider ranging things 1/100,000 seems most common. See e.g. these CDC stats.

Looks like group sorting fouls up for groups B & C where >9 subgroups are present, otherwise seems OKish to me. Using letters rather than numbers for the subgroups would probably fix that sorting problem (but not give a "Show me groups only" presentation). --R. S. Shaw (talk) 19:04, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

About the table… Why would a WHO table spell meningitis “Meningitits”? I am suspicious of the source table. Is there a link to the source still? The link is a non-page. RCIreader (talk) 15:20, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

longer view?

By focusing on a single year, the data leaves out pandemics, very large wars, and natural disasters.

No supervolcano happened in 2002. World War 2 didn't happen in 2002. Though these are rare events, some of them kill a huge number of people, and so may be significant enough to affect the overall risk.

Do we have any data on this? --Hirsutism (talk) 17:51, 22 February 2014 (UTC)

Subgroup column should be merged in to Group column, IMO

I agree, as long as the group figures are shown in boldface or with a background color, because they are supposed to add up to 100%. Gap9551 (talk) 15:37, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

AfD: Mortal wound

Editors watching this page may wish to contribute to this articles for deletion nomination. I found it under referenced, containing original research and lacking in info which was not covered elsewhere Edaham (talk)

"List of most common diseases"

@Doc James: List of most common diseases now redirects to List of causes of death by rate, but I'm not sure if this redirect page is accurate, since the list excludes other common diseases that are less often fatal. Does this redirect page need to be changed? Jarble (talk) 03:35, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

The 4th leading cause of death in the US is adverse reactions to prescription drugs, according to the FDA

According to the FDA and Institute of Medicine, adverse reactions to prescription drugs cause over 106,000 deaths annually in the U.S. alone, making adverse reaction to prescription drugs "the 4th leading cause of death—ahead of pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS, pneumonia, accidents, and automobile deaths."

Source: https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/DevelopmentResources/DrugInteractionsLabeling/ucm110632.htm#ADRs:%20Prevalence%20and%20Incidence

Shouldn't this be included on this Wikipedia page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Untranslatable energy (talk • contribs) 06:08, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

when does the CDC put at least total number of deaths for a new year on CDC.gov? Also, are we looking at a Death Algorithm??

Seems like the conclusive statistic all the others depend on for reference is the Total Number of Deaths Per Year as stated by the CDC, on CDC.gov But where is 2017's statistic? How many people died in 2017? Not to ask what they died from, but simply how many total died? No one knows. That is eerie. Especially when waiting to see whether there was another 80k increment in the increase in number of deaths from the previous year, as was the case in 2014, or if there is going to be the prevailing 40k (approx) increment that has been happening since around 2008. If its yet another approx. 40k increment, that yet again suggests an algorithmic origin for these astounding increases. If it were around 80k again however, it would DEFINITELY suggest that it is algorithmical -- more specifically I hypothesize it is a national insurance standards algorithm for the number of patients doctors can have die each year before more serious repercussions (like telling the doctor to go home and stop working for the year, basically).

Before 2008, the number of deaths per year hardly increased at all - and hadn't seen large increases since the 1990s.

It has been WAY too consistent (the increase in number of deaths per year) to not beg this as the most obvious explanation.. Unfortunately, that would simply that approximately 2 million people have died thus far from Bad Algorithms. I repeat, Bad Algorithms. Poorly designed? Well that would be quite an understatement. Intentionally Geared Toward Death is more like it.

ongoing debate on deletion of Human and artificial cause death in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

@Darrellx, Gaborgulya, Danny, R. S. Shaw, Senor Freebie, Teemu Ruskeepää, Pgan002, No such user, Doc James, and Beland:

if it is all possible someone could join me on the nomination of the article for deletion, I don't think it should be deleted, I think the nominating editors and voting editors aren't even interested in the article and are simply attempting to eleiminate it because they just don't like the subject. The reasons they give don't seem valid, It would be really great if someone could add their opinion from here. thanks Sederecarinae (talk) 19:19, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@Mikael Häggström: Sederecarinae (talk) 19:53, 23 April 2019 (UTC) @NCurse: Sederecarinae (talk) 21:23, 23 April 2019 (UTC) @EamonnPKeane, Frmorrison, Neutrality, Jeandré du Toit, and Pascal666: Sederecarinae (talk) 21:27, 23 April 2019 (UTC) are listed in users from "Authorship attribution" Sederecarinae (talk) 21:28, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

@Sederecarinae: Greetings! Thanks for your efforts to improve the encyclopedia. You should know that trying to recruit other editors with a certain opinion to influence the outcome of a discussion is considered inappropriate behavior, as explained by Wikipedia:Canvassing. It looks like you created this article recently and you're the main contributor; try not to take the deletion of this article personally. I don't see any evidence that the other participants are reacting negatively to the subject matter; all of their complaints are about the scope of the article and selection and presentation of material, and they seem to be generally accurate. If this article were to be filled out with full coverage of all the areas listed, it would be far too long to be a single article, and it would have severe overlap issues with other articles, some of which are actually linked. Probably the material that's being added here should actually be added to other existing articles, not all of which have good coverage. But the other articles generally have scopes which are supported by consensus and which make it relatively easy for readers to find what they're looking for, though some are definitely lacking content. In Wikipedia's coverage on causes of death, it's unusual to see both high-level worldwide statistics and mention of individual incidents. In articles with a consistent level of detail, there wouldn't be enough room to mention both of those things in the same article. This is why we have List of unusual deaths separate from List of causes of death by rate. The article you have created overlaps both of those, among many others created to contain the very large amount of data on this subject, and overlap is often not helpful to readers. I'll try to identify on the AFD where the overlapping content for various sections might fit in better. -- Beland (talk) 20:05, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Sederecarinae (talk) 20:22, 23 April 2019 (UTC)

Natural Cause of Death

Somehow I'm having a hard time to find anything about "Natural Cause of Death".

From what I read here, it would be because in most cases we can find a cause such as Cancer or Natural Disaster or this or that. If that's the case, I think we should have a section explaining why there isn't a line in the graph about natural causes of death. Alexis Wilke (talk) 23:02, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

USA vs Rest of the World

Is there any particular reason the length of this article is dominated by information about one single country? Also, starting with Developed vs. developing economies / By age group it is apparently just randomly dumped chart info copied from elsewhere. ♆ CUSH ♆ 10:44, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

accuracy ? some items of question

what are the units on that bar chart on the right of the page?

why does it say 17.x for heart while the article has 29.x% different years data used? different units ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 107.77.202.21 (talk) 15:17, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Typo

There is a typo on the Graph for Annual number of deaths by cause Digestive disease is digetive disease. WWDQNFQAE (talk) 09:49, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Wikideas1 authored the graph on Commons, so pinging them. No such user (talk) 09:55, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Major update moved from lede

I have removed the following major update from the lede as the lede is supposed to summarise the article. However there may be material here that can be used to update the article

In 2017 , the WHO recorded 56.97 million people died because of the following rate for example 7.87% of death was related to Injuries and 72.83% was related to Non-communicable disease(NCDs) and 19.31% was related to Communicable , Maternal, and nutritional diseases. In 2018 , world faced with 57.35 million death that 15 leading cause of death in this year remined the same as in 2017. The death rate increased in 2019, it was 57.94 million people, that 18.56 million death were due to Cardiovascular diseases and 10.08 million death were due to cancer and the other related to other diseases. In 2020, the world faced with 63.17 million death , that one of the cause of this increase was Coronavirus. Provisional estimates indicated that we faced with17.7% increase in death that the first cause of death was Heart disease ( around  20.6%) and the second cause was cancer (around17.8%) and the third cause was Covid-19 (around 10.4%). Unfortunately the rate of death was increased and it was 69.25 million people in 2021 that this rate increased because of the Corona virus but fortunately this rate decreased at 2022 and it became 67.10 million death because of the science progressed about this virus and we were able to overcome it.

However it needs rephrasing into Wikipedia style as we don't describe things as fortunate or unfortunate. ϢereSpielChequers 08:52, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Alcohol/Drug Addiction

This chart shows alcohol and drugs as a “disorder” which drives me crazy. Addiction is a DISEASE that left untreated IS FATAL ! Addiction isn’t a “disorder” 65.60.188.79 (talk) 11:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

List of causes of death in the United States. Need separate article

There should be a separate page for List of causes of death in the United States. It would be linked from many US health and healthcare pages on Wikipedia.

Figure 4 from this CDC article would be good in the Wikipedia article:

• https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db456.pdf

And the FastStats list for the US:

• https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

They are in the public domain since they are from the CDC. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:46, 16 August 2023 (UTC)