MORTALITY TRENDS

• Trends in national mortality rates •  

Graphs showing time trends in mortality rates

Percentage of deaths from external causes at age 15-69 where the

intent was undetermined, both sexes combined, 10 countries

Graph showing injury of undetermined intent for 11 countries

Comment: This graph shows the percentage of all deaths from injury (between the ages of about 15 and 70) in which the intent underlying the injury was not determined. The percentage is calculated from the ratio of the age-standardised mortality rates for "injury, intent undetermined" and for "all injury".

Injuries of undetermined intent cannot be coded elsewhere. They therefore result in undercounting of deaths from particular causes of injury, and the larger the percentage above, the greater that undercounting must have been.

Data on injury of undetermined intent became available with ICD-8 (1968, for most countries).

"Injury" here means the same as "external cause" in the International Classification of Diseases.

For an assessment of how complete and precise death certification is in different countries, see Counting the dead and what they died from... (Mathers et al., Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2005:83:171-7).

WHO mortality rates for particular countries, ages and causes of death