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Competence Centre on Foresight

We foster a strategic, future-oriented and anticipatory culture in the EU policymaking process.

  • Page | 23 Oct 2018

Global causes of death

  • Ischaemic heart disease and stroke have been the world’s top causes of death for the past 15 years (accounting for a combined 15 million deaths in 2015) and are expected to continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
  • Low- to middle-income countries account for 85% of the world’s population and 92% of the global burden of disease. 
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  • In developed countries, bacterial infections are rising as resistance to antibiotics is becoming more common. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the cause of premature death of some 25,000 people in the EU and 23,000 people in the USA, yearly. By 2050, global annual death toll due to AMR could grow to 10 million people per year, from today's estimated 700,000 death per year. 
  • Since 2000, the global burden of disease from communicable diseases (e.g. infectious diseases, HIV, tuberculosis, and measles) has been outweighed by noncommunicable diseases, (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases, diabetes). The total mortality from infectious diseases fell from 25% in 1998 to less than 16% in 2010. The global disease burden will continue shifting from communicable to noncommunicable diseases (NCD).
  • Global deaths from all communicable diseases — including AIDS, diarrhoea, malaria, and respiratory infections — are projected to continue to decline;
  • HIV continues to be a major global public health issue. Globally, 1 million people died from HIV-related causes in 2016; approximately 36.7 million people were living with HIV and some 1.8 million people became newly infected. Some 54% of adults and 43% of children living with HIV are currently receiving lifelong antiretroviral therapy (ART).

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