The World health statistics report is the World Health Organization (WHO) annual compilation of the latest available data on health and health-related indicators for its 194 Member States.
Key Findings
The global impact of communicable diseases has been in steady decline since 2000 but they were still responsible for more than 10.2 million deaths in 2019, representing 18% of all deaths.
Poor, more disadvantaged populations tend to suffer from a higher burden of communicable diseases, due to low knowledge of protective behaviours, increased exposure due to living and working conditions, poor health-seeking behaviours and barriers to accessing health services, all of which inhibit rapid detection and treatment.
The dramatic decline in premature mortality due to communicable diseases, particularly in low-resource settings, has shifted the disease burden to non- communicable diseases (NCD), increasing the global share of NCD deaths among all deaths from 60.8% in 2000 to 73.6% in 2019.
While NCDs accounted for up to over 85% of deaths in HICs (high-income country) – with heart disease, dementia and stroke being the leading causes – communicable diseases along with maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions were still responsible for nearly half of all deaths in Low Income Countries with lower respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS remaining in the top 10 causes of death.
LICs (low-income country) and LMICs (lower-middle-income country) bore the vast majority of the burden of communicable diseases, including that attributable to tuberculosis (TB), HIV, malaria, neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and hepatitis B.
