According to data collected by Our World in Data , around 56 million people die each year in the world. The main cause of death is cardiovascular disease; almost 18 million lives are lost because of it, about a third of the total. And if they are grouped into a single category, cancers are responsible for nearly 10 million deaths. Overall, 73% die of non-communicable diseases.
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Deaths due to infectious diseases now represent 19%. This group includes, above all, diseases of the respiratory system (2.56 million) and of the digestive system (2.38 million), including diarrhea (1.6). A quarter of a century ago, the percentage of deaths from infectious diseases was 33%, and is generally higher in poor countries.
The drop from 33% to 19% is linked to progress. The poorer a country is, the higher the percentage of deaths due to infectious diseases. The opposite occurs with non-infectious ones. The other major category of deaths corresponds to those caused by blows or injuries, but these hardly change over time and represent 8% (it was 9% 25 years before).
Almost 4% of boys and girls die before their fifth birthday. In other words, nearly six million die each year. The main direct cause of death of these creatures are respiratory infections (about 800,000). In fact, one in three people killed by this reason is under the age of five. 650,000 babies less than one month old die from neonatal pathologies or complications. And diarrhea is also a major cause of infant death; Although their numbers have dropped a lot, around half a million boys and girls die for that reason.
Today we still do not know what percentage of infected people lose their lives due to SARS-CoV-2
Together, these conditions are responsible for a great loss of life years. So are traffic accidents (1.2 million deaths, many of them from adolescents and young people), and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), due to which almost one million people lose their lives (84% under 50 years). Of the 800,000 who kill themselves each year, 460,000 are under the age of 50.
At the opposite extreme are the different forms of dementia, which are responsible for 2.5 million annual deaths. That number has risen sharply and will continue to rise as life expectancy increases due to the decrease, especially in deaths due to infectious diseases. Precisely for this reason, it does not cause the loss of many years of life.
There are three causes of death that do not have the quantitative relevance of the previous ones, but that nevertheless receive great media attention; they are homicides, terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes. About 400,000 people die each year from homicide, and 26,000 from terrorist acts. Natural disasters cause 9,600 deaths.
Hunger, tobacco and obesity
When we talk about causes of death we are referring to the immediate or immediate causes, the diseases that cause them. As is known, there are factors that increase or decrease the probability of contracting diseases that can be fatal.
According to FAO, around six million children under the age of five die every year as a result of hunger. The total number of lives lost due to this cause is surely close to nine million, but those under five are the most vulnerable to its effects. In fact, a small part of these deaths occur from starvation. Most are caused by a persistent lack of food and essential nutrients, which makes children weak, underweight, and vulnerable.
On the other hand, every year eight million people die from tobacco, and obesity is responsible for almost five million deaths; in both cases, half are under the age of 70. 2.8 million die from alcohol (of which two million are under the age of 70). Finally, there are the environmental factors: air pollution causes the death of 3.4 million and that of the home, 1.6 million.
The covid-19 arrives
In 2020, a new term has been introduced in this macabre accounting: the covid-19 pandemic. As of May 18, there have been more than 315,000 confirmed deaths in the world, although the actual figure is surely much higher. As an example, in Spain, the deaths recorded in civil registries were, between March 17 and May 5, on the order of 56% more than in the same period in other years.
It can be assumed that this excess of deaths is due to the effects of the disease, so that real deaths from this cause represent the order of 30% more than those officially reported for the same period. Assuming that, overall, the actual number of deaths in the rest of the world is underestimated to a similar extent, there would be 400,000 people killed by covid-19 to date.
Today we still do not know what percentage of infected people lose their lives due to SARS-CoV-2. If it were 0.1% and all human beings could be infected, the total number of deaths could, hypothetically, reach the figure of 7 M. It will surely be much less infected, since perhaps not all people are susceptible or because develop an effective vaccine first, but the death rate is probably greater than 0.1%. Based on data from the ENE-COVID report on seroprevalence, published on May 13, and other studies, this percentage is surely higher than 0.5%, so that deaths in the world can easily exceed six figures. . It would thus become a significant lethality factor.
The above figures do not include all the people who will die from indirect causes, what we could call side effects of the virus. Fortunately, world food trade has been able to continue for the time being, but as Máximo Torero, FAO chief economist, has warned, the measures taken by most countries to curb the effects of covid-19 could also have devastating consequences. , due to serious alterations in the world food supply.
Thousands of lives will be lost for other reasons. It is estimated that 253,500 to 1,157,000 children under the age of five will die during the next six months, and between 12,200 and 56,700 mothers in developing countries due to the deterioration of health systems and possibilities of getting food. Thousands of lives will be lost due to the economic deterioration caused by restrictions on activity and mobility. And it is also more than likely that many people die from avoiding going to the hospital for fear, perhaps, of contracting the disease.
Many of those deaths will occur far away; others will occur between us. Of many of them, we may never be aware of it.
Juan Ignacio Pérez Iglesias is Professor of Physiology, University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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