Preventive Medicine - Leading Cause of Preventable Death

Leading Cause of Preventable Death

Leading causes of preventable death worldwide as of the year 2001
Cause	Deaths caused (millions per year)
Hypertension	7.8
Smoking	5.0
High cholesterol	3.9
Malnutrition	3.8
Sexually transmitted infections	3.0
Poor diet	2.8
Overweight and obesity	2.5
Physical inactivity	2.0
Alcohol	1.9
Indoor air pollution from solid fuels	1.8
Unsafe water and poor sanitation	1.6

Leading preventive interventions that reduce deaths in children 0–5 years old worldwide
Intervention	Percent of all child deaths preventable
Breastfeeding	13
Insecticide-treated materials	7
Complementary feeding	6
Zinc	4
Clean delivery	4
Hib vaccine	4
Water, sanitation, hygiene	3
Antenatal steroids	3
Newborn temperature management	2
Vitamin A	2
Tetanus toxoid	2
Nevirapine and replacement feeding	2
Antibiotics for premature rupture of membranes	1
Measles vaccine	1
Antimalarial intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy	<1%

Leading causes of preventable deaths in the United States in the year 2000
Cause	Deaths caused	% of all deaths
Tobacco smoking	435,000	18.1
Poor diet and physical inactivity	365,000	15.2
Alcohol consumption	85,000	3.5
Infectious diseases	75,000	3.1
Toxicants	55,000	2.3
Traffic collisions	43,000	1.8
Firearm incidents	29,000	1.2
Sexually transmitted infections	20,000	0.8
Drug abuse	17,000	0.7

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Famous quotes containing the words leading and/or death:

“you are leading me on
To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)

“As deaths have accumulated I have begun to think of life and death as a set of balance scales. When one is young, the scale is heavily tipped toward the living. With the first death, the first consciousness of death, the counter scale begins to fall. Death by death, the scales shift weight until what was unthinkable becomes merely a matter of gravity and the fall into death becomes an easy step.”
—Alison Hawthorne Deming (b. 1946)