WHO Mortality Database
Interactive platform visualizing mortality data
| Title | Publishing year | Publishing offices | Disease category | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality for 282 causes of death in 195 countries and territories, 1980–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 | 2018 | Independent researchers | General | This article summarizes methods for the Global Burden of Disease 2017 national, regional and global estimates of mortality by cause, including methods for ill-defined (garbage) or incorrect cause-of-death information. |
| ICD-10 browser | 2019 | WHO | General | This interactive portal allows the user to search International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) codes by version and also provides links to ICD-10 manuals. |
| Algorithms for enhancing public health utility of national causes-of-death data | 2010 | Independent researchers | General | This article describes an approach to redistribute heart failure deaths. Heart failure is a leading ill-defined (garbage) cause of death. |
| Improving the public health utility of global cardiovascular mortality data: the rise of ischemic heart disease | 2011 | Independent researchers | Cardiovascular diseases | This article summarizes the Global Burden of Disease approach to ill-defined (garbage) causes of death. |
| WHO-MCEE methods and data sources for child causes of death 2000-2017 | 2018 | WHO/UNICEF | General | This document describes WHO methods to compute national, regional and global causes of death for children under 5 years of age, including methods for ill-defined (garbage) codes. |
| WHO methods and data sources for global causes of death, 2000-2019 | 2020 | WHO | General | This document describes WHO methods to compute national, regional and global causes of death, including methods for ill-defined (garbage) codes and completeness. It also computes and applies quality ratings for death registration data, taking into account completeness of death registration and percentage of deaths assigned garbage codes. |
| Deaths from heart failure: using coarsened exact matching to correct cause-of-death statistics | 2010 | WHO | Cardiovascular diseases | This article describes an approach to redistribute heart failure deaths. Heart failure is a leading ill-defined (garbage) cause of death. |
| Maternal mortality: levels and trends 2000 to 2017 | 2019 | WHO/UNICEF/UNFPA/World Bank/UNPD | Maternal conditions | This report describes WHO methods for estimating maternal deaths, including correction for underrecording of maternal deaths in death registration data (described in chapter 3). |
| 2019 revision of the world population prospects | 2019 | UNDESA | General | This online portal provides access to the United Nation's estimates of population, fertility and all-cause mortality. |
| The WHO Application of ICD-10 to deaths during pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium: ICD-MM | 2012 | WHO | Maternal conditions | This document provides detailed guidance on implementation of International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision (ICD-10) coding of maternal deaths. |
| Global, regional, and national age-sex-specific mortality and life expectancy, 1950–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 | 2018 | Independent researchers | General | This study estimates the completeness (percentage of deaths registered) of death registration data, combining the results of three methods. An online interactive visualization is available to view the results of each demographic method for each country and year. |
| What Can We Conclude from Death Registration? Improved Methods for Evaluating Completeness | 2010 | Independent researchers | General | This study evaluates multiple variants of three methods for assessing completeness of death registration data, including by applying the methods to simulated datasets with known errors (e.g., age misreporting) and to data known to be fully complete. |
| World Health Statistics 2019 | 2019 | WHO | General | This publication compiles WHO's estimates of health-related Sustainable Development Goals indicators, including estimates of completeness of death registration data. |
| Global, regional, and national age-sex specific mortality for 264 causes of death, 1980–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016 | 2017 | Independent researchers | General | This study introduced a star system to rate the quality of death registration data, taking into account completeness of death registration and reporting of data by specific, well-defined International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD) codes. The star ratings have been updated in subsequent iterations of the GBD study. |
| Global status report on road safety 2018 | 2018 | WHO | Unintentional injuries | This report uses data from the WHO mortality database and data from road traffic surveillance systems, as reported by countries, to estimate road traffic fatalities in each country. The report finds that road traffic deaths are underestimated in the death registration data in some countries. |
| Alcohol poisoning is a main determinant of recent mortality trends in Russia: evidence from a detailed analysis of mortality statistics and autopsies | 2008 | Independent researchers | Cardiovascular diseases, Unintentional injuries | This study uses autopsy data to investigate cardiovascular deaths in the Russian Federation. The authors found that many alcohol poisoning deaths were wrongly certified to cardiovascular causes. |
| Estimating Population Cause-Specific Mortality Fractions from in-Hospital Mortality: Validation of a New Method | 2007 | Independent researchers | General | This study proposes a method to use data on deaths by cause in hospitals together with partial death registration data to correct for quality and completeness issues in the death registration data. |
| A global assessment of civil registration and vital statistics systems: monitoring data quality and progress | 2015 | Independent researchers | General | This study proposes and computes a six-dimension index to measure the performance of civil registration and vital statistics data. The six dimensions are: completeness of death reporting, quality of death reporting, level of cause-specific detail, internal consistency, quality of age and sex reporting, and data availability or timeliness. |
| Analytical Methods to Evaluate the Completeness and Quality of Death Registration: Current State of Knowledge | 2017 | UNDESA | General | This technical paper reviews the current state of knowledge about analytical methods to evaluate the completeness of death registration data. |
| Overview of the principles and international experiences in implementing record linkage mechanisms to assess completeness of death registration | 2017 | UNDESA | General | This technical paper reviews the record linkage method to assess completeness of death registration data. |
| International form of medical certificate of cause of death | 2016 | WHO | General | This document is the WHO-recommended international form of the medical certificate of cause of death, as specified in Volume 2 of the International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems, 10th revision (ICD-10). |
| Counting the dead and what they died from | 2006 | WHO | General | This article introduces and explains the main indicators of death registration data quality, and assesses the status of death registration data globally as of 2003. |
| A method for deriving leading causes of death | 2006 | WHO | General | This article lays out principles for ranking leading causes of death and proposes a list of disease categories for ranking based on public health prevention principles. |
| ICD-11 browser | 2019 | WHO | General | This interactive portal allows the user to search International Classification of Diseases for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics, Eleventh Revision (ICD-11) codes by version and also provides links to and ICD-11 coding tool and ICD-11 manuals. |
| The dangers of gender bias in CRVS and cause of death data: the path to health inequality | 2020 | Independent researchers | General | This brief outlines how quality and completeness of death registration data can vary by gender. |
| Cancer Today | 2018 | WHO | Malignant neoplasms | This interactive tool provides a suite of data visualization tools to explore estimates of the incidence, mortality, and prevalence of 36 specific cancer types and of all cancer sites combined in 185 countries or territories of the world in 2018, by sex and age group, as part of the GLOBOCAN project. |
| Estimating the global cancer incidence and mortality in 2018: GLOBOCAN sources and methods | 2018 | WHO | Malignant neoplasms | This article presents WHO's methods for estimating cancer incidence and mortality, which rely on data from the WHO mortality database. |
| Suicide in the world | 2019 | WHO | Intentional injuries | This booklet presents WHO's latest estimates of suicide by country. |
| Global report on drowning: preventing a leading killer | 2014 | WHO | Unintentional injuries | This report presents drowning rates computed from the WHO Mortality Database, based on data available in 2014, as well as WHO's estimates of drowning. |
| Global status report on preventing violence against children 2020 | 2020 | WHO | Intentional injuries | This report presents global estimates of homicide with a particular focus on children. The estimates were computed using police data together with data from the WHO mortality database. |
| Improving the comparability of diabetes mortality statistics in the U.S. and Mexico | 2008 | Independent researchers | Cardiovascular diseases, Diabetes mellitus | This study describes how diabetes and other causes of death are assigned as the underlying cause of death, and proposes statistical methods to standardize assignment of the underlying cause of death for deaths in which diabetes is recorded in the death certificate. |
| Exposing misclassified HIV/AIDS deaths in South Africa | 2011 | Independent researchers | Infectious and parasitic diseases | This study develops a method to identify and reassign HIV/AIDS deaths certified to other causes of death in South Africa. |
| Identifying deaths from AIDS in South Africa | 2005 | Independent researchers | Infectious and parasitic diseases | This study describes how deaths caused by HIV/AIDS are mainly assigned to other causes of death in South Africa, and identifies the causes of death to which HIV/AIDS deaths are assigned. |
| Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 | 2020 | Independent researchers | General | This article summarizes methods for the Global Burden of Disease 2019 national, regional and global estimates of mortality by cause |