The Global Health Observatory

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Global Health Observatory
Appears in:
Table
Indicator name:
Suicide mortality rate (per 100 000 population), crude
Short name:
Suicide rate
Topic:
Mortality and burden of disease
Rationale:
 Measuring how many people die each year and why they died is one of the most important means – along with gauging how diseases and injuries are affecting people  – for assessing the effectiveness of a country’s health system. Cause-of-death statistics help health authorities determine their focus for public health actions.
Definition:
Number of suicide deaths in a year, divided by the population and multiplied by 100 000.  
Disaggregation:
Age, Sex :
Method of estimation:
The estimates are derived from the WHO Global Health Estimates (GHE). Detailed methods are available here, and summarized below. For countries with a high-quality vital registration system including information on cause of death, the vital registration that member states submit to the WHO Mortality Database were used, with adjustments where necessary, e.g. for under-reporting of deaths, unknown age and sex, and ill-defined causes of deaths. For countries without high-quality death registration data, cause of death estimates are calculated using other data, including household surveys with verbal autopsy, sample or sentinel registration systems, special studies. These estimates represent the best estimates of WHO, computed using standard categories, definitions and methods to ensure cross-country comparability, and may not be the same as official national estimates. Due to changes in input data and methods, the revisions of GHE are not comparable to previously published WHO estimates.
Method of estimation of global and regional aggregates:
Weighted average using population estimates from the World Population Prospect, produced by the UN Population Division, as denominators.
Other possible data sources:
Household surveys
Surveillance systems; All references to Kosovo should be understood to be in the context of the United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)
Sample or sentinel registration systems
Special studies
Preferred data sources:
Civil registration with complete coverage and medical certification of cause of death
Unit of Measure:
per 100,000 population
Expected frequency of data dissemination:
Every 2-3 years
Expected frequency of data collection:
Annual
Comments:
High-income countries have systems in place for collecting information on causes of death in the population. Many low- and middle-income countries do not have such systems, and the numbers of deaths from specific causes have to be estimated from incomplete data. Improvements in producing high quality cause-of-death data are crucial for improving health and reducing preventable deaths in these countries. Please refer to the Global Health Estimates methods document for more details, including confidence intervals for comparisons of age-specific rates across countries or time.
Contact person email:
healthstat@who.int
Name:
healthstat@who.int
IMRID:
4664
Links:
World Population Prospects. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
WHO methods and data sources for country-level causes of death, 2000-2019
Indicator Metadata Registry List
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