Adieu, the final farewell, an exploration of death!
Causes: Forward to The Soul – Forward to Religious Beliefs – Back to Human Death
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So, we haven’t found a universal definition of what death is. But we have lots of material about the causes of death:
UK
Doctors often put ‘natural causes’ on a death certificate. This is where a post-mortem has not been ordered, nothing sudden or acute took place, and there was no accident or ‘event’ involved.
It might be that there was no evident disease that might be said to have brought about the death. It might be that there were multiple causes and this is merely an opt-out used to avoid seeking an explanation (Covid became something of a scapegoat).
It could be old age or a general loss of energy, appetite and well-being. Essentially, their time has come!
If it is simply that multiple organs like your heart, lungs and pancreas are failing then natural causes is still often deemed as appropriate. Where there is a heart attack, a cancer, or an infection it is usually stated in preference to natural causes.
In the UK in 2022 there were 577,160 deaths in the UK, this was 0.8% of the then UK population. The causes for these are shown as:
| Major causes – for all UK deaths (2022) | No | %age |
| Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease | 65,967 | 11.4 |
| Ischaemic heart diseases | 59,356 | 10.3 |
| Chronic lower respiratory diseases | 29,815 | 5.2 |
| Cerebrovascular diseases | 29,274 | 5.1 |
| Malignant neoplasm of trachea, bronchus and lung | 28,571 | 5.0 |
Another source breaks out its data, stating the 20 most common main causes of death within the UK Biobank cohort are:
Notes: the UK Biobank is a respected large-scale biomedical database and research, but it seems to have an unrepresentative aspect, because it places the mean age of death at 71, with men, and on average they are four months older than women at death. ONS data shows average male death at 81.5 years and females at 85.5 – these are more usual.
Worldwide
Worldwide each year a little over 55m people die, that is interestingly a consistent 0.8% of the total population. But it’s the equivalent of wiping out all the inhabitants of a country the size of Colombia, Italy, South Africa or South Korea – the equivalent of eliminating the combined population of Australia and Venezuela.
That means that, on average, a total of 150,000 die every day in the world, and about two thirds, 100,000 of these are reported as of age-related causes.
Confusingly another source suggests that 98,000 each day die of hunger or diseases caused by malnutrition. (Source: Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Reporter on the Right to Food.)
The WHO (World Health Organisation, WHO 2019) summarises that non-communicable diseases account for 74% of all deaths worldwide.
| Cause of non-communicable diseases – Worldwide (2019) | No | % |
| Cancers | 8.9m | 18.0 |
| Ischaemic heart diseases | 6.1m | 16.0 |
| Strokes | 11.0 | |
| Chronic respiratory disease | 7.0 | |
| Digestive diseases | 4.1 | |
| Neurological diseases | 3.9 | |
| Diabetes | 2.7 |
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| [FACTOID: In c. 400 BCE Hippocrates thought a tumor’s features of a central body and extensions through the body resembled a crab. The Greek word for crab is karkinoma, which is why today we use the terms carcinoma, and more popularly the word cancer.] |
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WHO states that 14% of global deaths are due to infectious diseases. In developing nations, inferior sanitary conditions and lack of access to modern medical technology makes death from infectious diseases much more common than in the developed countries. Examples are:
| Cause of non-communicable diseases – Worldwide (2019) | No | % |
| Pneumonia | 4.4 | |
| Diarrhoeal diseases | 2.7 | |
| Tuberculosis | 2.0 | |
| HIV/AIDS | 34.0m | |
| Malaria | 0.6m |
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Note: Malaria caused about 249m cases of fever in 2022 yet caused only 600k deaths annually.
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The WHO shows that neo-natal conditions cause 3.3% of deaths. While this is declining it is still prominent in poorer regions. This covers prematurity, respiratory dysfunction, birth trauma, congenital malformations, deaths before 28-days of life – and includes maternal deaths.
| [FACTOID: The so-called ‘Spanish’ Flu epidemic of 1918-1920 killed 21m people, but this was active in a disrupted post-WWI environment. The recent COVID-19 pandemic of 2019-2021 is said to have killed 6.9m.] |
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Also making an appearance on the global mortality charts are:
| Cause of infectious diseases – Worldwide (2019) | No | % |
| ‘Other’ accidents | 3.1 | |
| Transport accidents | 2.3 | |
| Suicides | 1.3 | |
| Murders/homicides | 0.7 | |
| Death in war or battle | 0.2 | |
| Death from terrorism | 0.05 |
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Notes: Tobacco smoking killed over 100 m people worldwide in the 20th century and is projected to kill a billion people worldwide in the 21st century.
Natural disasters kill around 45,000 people annually.
We should not ignore the many stillbirths, miscarriages and abortions!
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Causes: Forward to The Soul – Forward to Religious Beliefs – Back to Human Death
Back to Adieu Index - Back to Bob Denton home page
