Death is an unavoidable fate for each and every one of the seven thousand seven hundred million people on Earth. Of course, some causes of death are much more frequent than others , and the perception of risk does not always correspond, in fact, to the incidence of some of them.
Let’s take some examples. The fear of flying, the attack of a shark, or the fear of dying from the incidence of lightning are some of the most common phobias; however, they are by no means very common ways of dying. In fact, some of the deadliest animals on Earth are not perceived as a threat by most people, despite the fact that the mosquito is a transmission pathway for malaria, a disease that causes about 620,000 deaths each year globally. .
On the other hand, among the most common causes of death, cardiovascular diseases rank first by far. Cardiovascular diseases have been, since the second half of the 20th century, the main cause of death in the world. Cancer follows it in second place worldwide, although tumors became the main cause of death in some Western countries from the second decade of the 21st century.
Obviously, the list of the most frequent causes of death also depends on the geographical distribution of the population. In some areas of the planet, more people die from certain diseases than in others , being malnutrition or digestive diseases, infectious diseases or diarrhea some of the most common causes of death in underdeveloped countries; On the other hand, in the first world countries, people die more from cancer or cardiovascular diseases (the latter, by the way, aggravated by obesity or a poor diet; the distribution of food, curiously, has a very striking influence on the causes death globally).
In the following list, you will find the 30 leading causes of death in the world and a brief description of each of them, regardless of geographical distribution; solely by number of deaths across the planet. Furthermore, this ranking has not taken into account risk factors, such as obesity, poor diet, lack of physical exercise … but refers only to direct causes of death. All of them are ordered from more to less deaths; that is, from highest to lowest frequency.
The data correspond to the year 2017 and have been obtained from the data office ‘Our world in data’ of the University of Oxford.
