Citation, extracts and comment from me below.
CITATION: The Lancet, Volume 406, Issue 10513 p1811-1872 October 18, 2025 Open access
Global burden of 292 causes of death in 204 countries and territories and 660 subnational locations, 1990–2023: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023
GBD 2023 Causes of Death Collaborators*
EXTRACTS
Timely and comprehensive analyses of causes of death stratified by age, sex, and location are essential for shaping effective health policies aimed at reducing global mortality...
We examined global mortality patterns over the past three decades... There is an ever-present need for strengthened health-care systems that are resilient to future pandemics and the shifting burden of disease, particularly among ageing populations in regions with high mortality rates. Robust estimates of causes of death are increasingly essential to inform health priorities and guide efforts toward achieving global health equity. The need for global collaboration to reduce preventable mortality is more important than ever, as shifting burdens of disease are affecting all nations, albeit at different paces and scales.
COMMENT (NPW): Thanks largely to the Global Burden of Disease Study we know a great deal about medical causes of death: about different cardiovascular diseases, cancers, infectious diseases. But we continue to know very little about the healthcare causes of death, by which I mean the quality of care provided for the prevention, diagnosis and management of illness, which so clearly makes the difference between life and death, between health and suffering. We know that reliable healthcare information saves lives. Failure to access and apply reliable healthcare information, whether by the general public or by health workers, is a major cause of poor quality care, which causes more than 20,000 deaths every day in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [ Kruk M et al. High-quality health systems in the Sustainable Development Goals era: time for a revolution. The Lancet Global Health Commission| Volume 6, ISSUE 11, e1196-e1252, November 2018. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(18)30386-3 ]. But we know relatively little about the different contributing factors to poor care (including but not limited to the availability of relevant, reliable healthcare information).
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org