The distribution of deaths by causes is key for strategic, programmatic and policy decisions in health. The identification of those most frequent causes of deaths can be used for health situation analysis, identify current situation and trend on population health and to define interventions to overcome health issues.

IDC-10 includes twenty two Chapters, Chapter I to XVII relate to diseases and other morbid conditions, and Chapter XIX to injuries, poisoning and certain other consequences of external causes. Chapter XVIII covers symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified. Chapter XX covers external causes of morbidity and mortality. Categories of Chapters XIX and XXI shall not be used for coding underlying cause of death. More information is available on ICD-10 page.  

This interactive visualization presents the distribution of deaths organized is by ICD-10 Chapters and detailed causes of death. Data are also breakdown by sex and they can be filtered by country, age group, and year. Detailed causes of death are displayed in the bottom view (horizontal bar chart) when any item is selected at the top view and they belong to selected ICD-10 Chapters. This feature allows user to see detailed causes of death sorted by number of deaths.

In the Region of the Americas from 1995 to 2009, Chapter IX - Diseases of circulatory system (I00-I99) is responsible for the higher number of deaths: 8,407,915 of deaths in female (34% of total deaths in female) and 8,239,269 of deaths in male (28% of total deaths in male), followed by Chapter II - Neoplasms (C00-D48) with 20% and 18% in female and male respectively. It is noticed that Chapter XX - External causes of mortality (V01-Y98) is 3.5 times higher in men (14%) that in women (4%).

We encourage all readers to interact with this visualization in order to identify those Chapters and detailed causes of deaths with the highest magnitude. Use filters by country and age group to select the population of your interest and select years to explore data over time.