17 May 2017•Update: 17 May 2017
By Fatih Erel
GENEVA
Almost half of all deaths globally are now recorded with a cause, UN health agency said on Wednesday.
"Of the estimated 56 million deaths globally in 2015, 27 million were registered with a cause of death,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said in its latest global health report citing its own World Health Statistics.
In 2005, only about one-third of deaths had a recorded cause, it said.
"Several countries have made significant strides towards strengthening the data they collect, including China, Turkey and the Islamic Republic of Iran, where 90 percent of deaths are now recorded with detailed cause-of-death information, compared with 5 percent in 1999."
The report shows that the life expectancy in Turkey is 75.8 years, maternal mortality ratio (per 100,000 live births) is 16, suicide mortality rate (per 100,000 population) is 8.7, road traffic mortality rate (per 100,000 population) is 8.9.
It said, globally, the probability of dying from diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung disease between ages 30 and 70 is 19 percent, a 17 percent decline from 2000.
"Almost 800,000 deaths by suicide occurred in 2015, with the highest rate in the European Region (14.1 per 100,000 population) and the lowest rate in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (3.8 per 100,000)," the report added.
“If countries do not know what makes people get sick and die, it is a lot harder to know what to do about it,” Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO’s Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation, said.
The latest WHO statistics highlight that the global level of alcohol consumption in 2016 was 6.4 litres of pure alcohol per person aged 15 years or older and more than 1.1 billion people smoked tobacco in 2015.
