WHO Report

The most common cause of death in the world turns out to be cardiovascular disorders. For Korea though, it is cancer.

On September 10, after analyzing the reported causes of death by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Statistical Office (NSO), the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that in 2011, about 55 million people died around the world and 2/3 of them died from chronic diseases. 

Cardiovascular disorders, cancer, diabetes, and chronic lung diseases have been picked as the 4 most common chronic diseases. About 17 million people died of cardiovascular diseases, making it the number one cause of death around the world. This means 3 out of 10 died with a cardiovascular disease. Specifically, ischemic heart diseases (IHD) killed about 7 million, and strokes killed 6.2 million. 

For deaths caused by non-chronic diseases, infections and malnutrition caused 25% and injuries caused 9%. Car accidents killed 35K people per day around the world, which is 700 more than in 2000. 

The number one cause of death in Korea was cancer. The 10 most common causes of death were cancer, cerebrovascular diseases, cardiac disorders, suicide, diabetes, pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory diseases, liver disorders, transportation accidents, and hypertension diseases. These caused 70.8% of total deaths. Alzheimers (#9) first showed up on the 10 most common causes of deaths in women.

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