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According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Alzheimer's and other dementias are now among the ten most common causes of death worldwide.
They were in seventh place last year, as the WHO reported on Wednesday.
New among the ten most common causes of death was diabetes in ninth place, with cases increasing by 70 percent since 2000. In 2019, 1.5 million people worldwide died of diabetes.
In 2019, people around the world lived an average of around six years longer than in 2000 - a good 73 years.
In the WHO European region, life expectancy rose on average from 72.5 to 78.2 years.
Covid-19 soon on the top 10 list?
It is still unclear what influence Covid-19 will have on the average lifespan.
In the current year, more than 1.5 million people worldwide have died from or with the disease caused by the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus.
If the numbers for the other causes stay around the same as in 2019 this year, Covid-19 will come seventh in the top ten causes of death, said a WHO spokeswoman.
In the subgroup of high-income countries - such as Germany or the USA - Alzheimer's and certain other dementias were even the second most common cause of death.
In the WHO European region, this number rose from 158,000 deaths in 2000 to 497,000 last year.
The increase cannot be explained solely by the fact that people are getting older, said the director of the WHO department for non-communicable diseases, Bente Mikkelsen.
This does not mean the general decline in brain performance in older people, explained Robert Jakob, WHO specialist for the statistical classification of diseases.
Alzheimer's and certain other dementias are caused by special diseases that could also have other consequences, such as circulatory disorders in the brain.
People then die from the side effects of the disease.
In people who also have heart disease or diabetes, this diagnosis is always given as the cause of death.
Nine million died of heart disease
Circulatory disorders of the heart caused by coronary artery disease or a heart attack remained the leading cause of death, as it has for 20 years.
Almost nine million people worldwide died of this in 2019, a good two million more than in 2000. Overall, heart disease made up 16 percent of global deaths.
In Europe, the number of deaths from heart disease has fallen by 15 percent to 2.16 million over the past two decades.
The most common cause of death was 2019
Heart disease
Strokes
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Deep respiratory infections
Complications in newborns
Tracheal, bronchial and lung cancer
Alzheimer's and other dementias
Diarrheal diseases
diabetes
Kidney disease.
These ten leading causes of death accounted for 55 percent of the total of 55.4 million deaths worldwide.
According to WHO data, the greatest progress was made in newborns: in 2000, 3.2 million newborns died, compared with around 2 million in 2019.
Fewer people died from diarrheal diseases: instead of 2.6 million in 2000, there were only 1.5 million in 2019.
While six of the most common causes of death were communicable diseases 20 years ago, only three were on the list last year - the WHO also includes complications in newborns in addition to deep respiratory infections and diarrhea.
An infection with the HI virus and the resulting immunodeficiency syndrome AIDS was still the eighth most common cause of death in 2000.
Last year, HIV / AIDS fell back to 19th place.
Tuberculosis fell from 7th to 13th place.
"We must expand the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of non-communicable diseases quickly," said WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
"To achieve this, basic health care needs to be urgently and drastically improved."
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he / dpa
