According to the WHO, 17 million people died from cardiovascular disease in 2011 worldwide. Road accidents include this ranking of the 10 main causes of death.
As in 2010, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in the world. Indeed, according to the 2011 report of the World Health Organization (WHO) on the ten main causes of death, these diseases which concern the heart and blood circulation were this year, at the origin of 17 million deaths, out of the 54.6 million deaths recorded worldwide. Of these, 7 million people died from heart failure and 6.2 million from stroke.
To complete this sad record, then come cancer, diabetes and chronic lung disease. WHO also reports that all these so-called non-communicable diseases are responsible for 66% of deaths in the world, against 60% 11 years ago.
Since some of these diseases are linked to tobacco, the Organization also points out that smoking alone is responsible for 5.4 million deaths worldwide. This plague represents 10% of the total mortality for the year 2011.
In addition, a new entry calls out on reading this table. It is true that road accidents make their sad appearance in this ranking. They caused 3,500 deaths every day, or 1.3 million in 2011 (including a quarter of pedestrians and cyclists). They come just behind diabetes and before prematurity. Which places them in 9th place. This unexpected figure will undoubtedly make holidaymakers more vigilant on the roads during this summer period.
In addition, as people in the health world keep saying, AIDS has not disappeared from the face of the earth and continues to ravage certain countries, particularly in Africa. HIV thus ranks 6th among causes of death, killing 1.6 million people in 2011 (2.9% of deaths), this rate has barely changed since 2000 (3%).
Finally, there is still a glimmer of hope in this ranking, with tuberculosis which came out of this top 10. Even if 1 million people died of it in 2011, this disease has now gone from 8th to 13th row.
For WHO, the aim of this work has been to catalog the causes of death, in order to be able to provide a means of analyzing the state of health systems around the world. “If in a given country, many children die of malaria, but a small portion of the health budget of that state is devoted to the treatment of this disease, that country can be encouraged to increase its expenditure in this area”, explains for example the Organization.
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