The unlisted toll
The first twelve counters come to about 48.4 million deaths a year. The baseline is 61.5 million. Four omitted lines now tick. The rest are explained, and do not.
Pathological Toll and Accidental Dooms are a selection. Added up they are about 48.4 million deaths a year. The all-cause baseline on the gravestone is 61.5 million. The difference, roughly 13 million, was named in the methodology and then left off the dashboard. This page is that gap, with a rule: a line ticks only when a published total can be cited. Everything else is explained, and the counter is refused.
The four counters below are not a partition of the 13 million, and they are not added to the 48.4 million. Neonatal deaths are also inside the age bars, as an age share of all deaths, which is a different sum. Do not add this page to the columns above it and call the result the world.
Neonatal conditions
The counter is 2.3 million deaths a year, in the first 28 days of life. That is the World Health Organization's fact-sheet figure for 2022. A 2023 reading of the UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation puts the same toll at 2.28 million. The card uses 2.3 million and does not pretend the third digit is the news.
The causes inside the group are familiar and awful: being born too early, lack of oxygen during birth, infection in the first weeks. About three quarters of the deaths are in the first week, and about a million newborns die in the first 24 hours, on the WHO's account of 2022. The longer essay on what an infant-mortality rate is actually measuring is The number that says the most about a country. The glossary entry is neonatal disorders.
Maternal conditions
About 260,000 women died during and following pregnancy and childbirth in 2023, on the estimate in Trends in maternal mortality 2000 to 2023, published by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, UNFPA, the World Bank and the UN Population Division. That is more than 700 a day. About 92 per cent of the deaths were in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia together accounted for about 225,000 of them.
The global maternal mortality ratio in that release was 197 deaths per 100,000 live births. The counter uses the count of deaths, not the ratio, because the rest of the dashboard is counts. The glossary entry is maternal conditions.
Self-harm
WHO's public figure is that more than 720,000 people die by suicide every year. The 2021 Global Health Estimates put the count at 727,000. The counter uses 720,000, the round figure, and the card says what the point estimate was. In 2021 this was about 1.1 per cent of all deaths, and about 73 per cent of the deaths were in low- and middle-income countries. The data are poor in many countries. Stigma and, in some places, the law mean under-reporting is worse here than for most causes.
The statistical name is self-harm. It is an external cause, and it is intentional, which is why it is not on Accidental Dooms even when the physical mechanism would otherwise look like a poisoning or a fall. The glossary entry is self-harm.
If any of this is difficult, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential support lines in most countries.
Interpersonal violence
The counter is 440,000 deaths a year. That is the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's average for intentional homicide from 2019 to 2021, published in the Global Study on Homicide 2023. The year 2021 itself was higher, about 458,000, and the study describes the longer run as fluctuating between about 400,000 and 450,000 victims a year. The card uses the average, and says so.
This is one person killing another. It excludes self-harm, and it excludes war, which is collective violence. Over 2019 to 2021 the same study put conflict-related deaths at an annual average of about 94,000, against about 440,000 homicides. Homicide was the larger toll in that window. A later war year can reverse the comparison, which is why war is not given a smooth counter below. The glossary entry is interpersonal violence.
If any of this is difficult, findahelpline.com lists free, confidential support lines in most countries.
Lines with no counter
Three names on the conditions side of the dashboard are real, and still do not tick. Ill-defined causes are the fourth, and they are a hole in the record rather than a missing total.
Cirrhosis of the liver is in the glossary. It is not inside metabolic collapse, which is diabetes and kidney disease. A global death total for it exists in the big modelled studies, and those totals move with the edition. Until this site is ready to pin one edition the way the atlas pins 2023, there is no counter.
Drug use disorders are where the WHO file puts fatal overdose. The glossary keeps them apart from unintentional poisoning, which is the 60,000-a-year card. Printing a second poison-like counter, on a round number this page would have to invent, would blur that distinction. The line is named so it is not invisible. It does not tick.
Nutritional deficiencies are named in the methodology as part of the gap. The glossary says the same. There is no counter until a total can be cited the way 2.3 million and 260,000 are cited.
Ill-defined causes
Every mortality file contains deaths whose certificate does not name a cause the tally can use. Modellers redistribute some of them. What remains is why a selection of neat counters never adds up to the gravestone. Giving that remainder its own ticking number would pretend the hole was a disease. The glossary entry is ill-defined causes.
Collective violence
War, and deaths caused by police or other authorities in the course of their duties. The glossary separates this from interpersonal violence. A peacetime average would hide the thing the line is for: some years are a different kind of year, and they often destroy the office that would have counted them. A year the rate cannot describe is that essay. There is no counter.
Natural disasters
Earthquakes, floods and storms. In the 2023 WHO estimates this was the largest external cause in Libya, about a quarter of all deaths, and 9.5 per cent of deaths in Turkey. One catastrophe does that. A smooth annual rate would turn those years into an ordinary pace, which is the opposite of what the glossary entry is trying to say. Lightning is not in this line. Lightning stays on the rare card, as a counted floor of about 4,000 a year. See natural disasters.