Measuring how many people die each year from unintentional poisonings provides an indication of the extent of inadequate management of hazardous chemicals and pollution, and of the effectiveness of a country’s health system. Cause-of-death statistics help health authorities determine their focus for public health actions.    

 Number of deaths from unintentional poisonings (by age and sex), for the year indicated.

Cause, Age, Sex

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, or 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.

Weighted average using population estimates from the World Population Prospect, produced by the UN Population Division, as denominators.

Deaths

Every 2-3 years

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.

caob@who.int

Bochen Cao

4666