This Disease Kills The Most People In The World

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 23, 8:42AM EDT

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This Disease Kills The Most People In The World — © Rhode Island National Guard (CC BY 2.0) by The National Guard

Over 55 million people die in the world each year. They do so from a large number of causes. COVID-19 has become one of those. Three years ago, the virus didn’t even exist. In years when there are large world wars, these can kill millions of people. The list goes on from there. Weather events kill people. People die in accidents. Violence, even outside wars, kills large numbers of people.

Worldwide, the largest causes of death remain diseases. Unlike the COVID-19 virus, the most deadly causes of death are noncommunicable. The WHO says that this category of disease caused 74% of the world’s deaths in 2019.

The largest cause of death in the world, which makes up about 16% of deaths, is “ischaemic heart disease.” The Mayo Clinic defines this as “when blood flow to your heart is reduced, preventing the heart muscle from receiving enough oxygen.”

In some portions of the world, particularly in advanced nations, this type of disease can be treated by drugs and surgery. However, these options are not available everywhere.

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The primary causes of ischaemic heart disease are smoking, poor diet, being overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Symptoms of the disease include fast heartbeat, nausea, sweating, and jaw pain.

Heart disease is also the leading cause of death in America. According to the CDC, it killed 696,962 people in 2020.

New data show that COVID-19 was the third largest cause of death in the U.S. last year. Of course, the number was zero in 2019 and before. A new CDC report states that “COVID-19 was associated with approximately 460,000 deaths in the U.S. during January–December 2021.” The information was contained in the Provisional Mortality Data — United States, 2021.

Heart disease remained the top cause of U.S. deaths last year, followed by cancer.

The global statistics are such that heart disease likely will be the leading cause of deaths worldwide, It is too far ahead of the other causes.

Click here to read States Where The Most People Die From Cancer

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.