Not only coronavirus: from which 150 thousand people die every day in the world
'14.06.2020'
Source: Inosmi.ru
Perhaps everything is not quite the way you think it writes "Inosmi" with reference to the Norwegian edition of Forskning.
Now not a day goes by without reports on the number of deaths from covid-19. But what are the main causes of death of people around the world? Cancer, war, terrorism, or maybe hunger or criminal violence? Perhaps everything is not quite the way you think, writes the Norwegian popular science publication.
Every day in the world about 150 thousand people go to another world.
Almost 50 thousand of them die from cardiovascular diseases. Just over 25 thousand are from cancer.
But what is the cause of death of the remaining 75 thousand? In addition to those 4 thousand a day that are now dying from covid-19.
Tuberculosis is more dangerous than war
Firstly, what you constantly hear about in the media: wars and conflicts, terrorism and natural disasters. But in fact, very few people around the world die from this. Only 25 people per day lose their lives due to natural disasters. Terrorism takes about 70 lives every day. Wars and conflicts kill an average of 350 people.
We can do a lot to eliminate such causes of death. Therefore, humanity spends great resources on the fight against wars, terrorists and on preparing society for natural disasters.
Four other causes of death, which we are also quite capable of combating (perhaps it is even simpler and cheaper), are tuberculosis (more than 3 thousand deaths per day), HIV / AIDS (about 2,6 thousand), suicide (about 2,2 thousand) and malaria (1,7 thousand).
For various reasons, these four serious causes of death are given much less attention in the news, although they take far more lives than wars, terrorism and natural disasters. And this in turn affects how politicians and other powerful people formulate their priorities.
On the subject: 'I just wanted to breathe, and I could not ...': diary of a 37-year-old resident of Florida who died from COVID-19
What about coronavirus?
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, much of the world has closed. This was done to slow the spread of infection and reduce mortality. Both in Norway and in the rest of the world a lot of attention is paid to the number of deaths.
In May, the disease covid-19, according to Worldometer, claimed daily from 3,5 to 6,5 thousand lives.
At the same time, Norway and many other countries discovered something surprising: in general, during the coronavirus epidemic, people began to die less.
Dementia and coronavirus die equally often
Now the number of deaths from coronavirus around the world is probably lower than the number of deaths from other respiratory diseases, including pneumonia, bronchitis and the usual seasonal flu.
And, apparently, as many elderly people die from dementia every day as from covid-19. In Norway, they die from it much more often than from a coronavirus.
Long-term mortality
If you want to understand the extent of what has now been declared a global crisis, it is worth looking at it in the future.
The mortality rates from various diseases we mentioned were taken from publications Our World in Data, an organization at British University of Oxford. She, in turn, is guided by the figures obtained as a result of the work of the large international healthcare project Global Burden of Disease (GBD, "The Global Burden of Disease"). With the exception of coronavirus data, disease mortality rates for 2017 are taken.
This graph clearly shows how many people die every day for various reasons.
Some die too soon
Causes of death vary greatly from country to country. In South Africa and Botswana, for example, the main cause of death now is HIV / AIDS, but in countries such as Norway, few die from these diseases.
Sooner or later, we all die for one reason or another. Therefore, it may be more interesting to know why some die earlier than most. Perhaps such a great interest in terrorism, wars and natural disasters is partly due to the fact that many of the relatively small number of their victims die much earlier than the rest. Although, in general, the same applies to the huge number of deaths from tuberculosis, HIV / AIDS, malaria, as well as those who themselves take their own lives.
On the subject: A woman with coronavirus died a week after giving birth, seeing her son only in the photo
Infectious diseases die less and less
If we go 30 years ago, into the past, we find that about one third of all deaths in the world were then caused by contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, HIV / AIDS and malaria - in addition to high child mortality and the fact that women very often died during childbirth. Also, many people died from malnutrition.
Today, the number of deaths for these reasons in the world has almost halved compared to 1990. But still, very many pass away in this way.
Nearly three-quarters of all deaths in the world are now attributable to noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, and diabetes.
Many children still die
In 2017, almost half of the people who died in the world were over 70. People are increasingly living long lives.
Since 1990, child mortality has more than halved. Then the children made up about a quarter of all the dead in the world.
However, to this day, many children in the world die before they reach the age of five. In 2017, almost 10% of all deaths on Earth were younger than this age.
In Norway, in 2017, children accounted for only 0,37% of the deaths in the country.
