Disease Burden & Mortality
What the world dies from, and how that mix has shifted by region over time. Non-communicable disease — cardiovascular disease and cancer above all — now dominates global mortality in a way that would have surprised public-health planners a century ago, when infectious disease led almost everywhere. Source: WHO-derived cause-of-death shares and UN mortality estimates, via Our World in Data.
Leading Causes of Death
Share of all deaths, top 12 of 21 tracked causes — switch the entity to compare a specific country against the cross-country average
Entity
| Cause | Share of deaths |
|---|
Mortality Trends by Region
Annual deaths — World in bold, click a continent to spotlight it. Rising totals mostly track population growth and aging, not necessarily worsening health; see the Overview page for life-expectancy trends alongside it. (Grouped by region; income-group breakdowns aren't available in this dataset.)
Under-Five Child Mortality
World trend, deaths per 100 live births before age 5 — one of the clearest long-run success stories in global health, down sharply over the period shown