Cause of death

Disease, injury, or any other circumstance that has led to death. Causes of death are indicated by all doctors in the medical section of the death certificate. Every country establishes its cause of death statistics on the basis of this information, after classifying the causes in accordance with the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases.

For death certificates mentioning several causes, The WHO has defined rules for determining the initial cause of death. These rules make it possible to compare countries and study changes or trends over time in a given country.

Mortality rate by cause of death is calculated as follows: Number of deaths imputable to a given cause per 100,000 persons for a given year.