WHO Mortality Database
Interactive platform visualizing mortality data
It is important to review the quality of the data for a better interpretation of the results of analyses. The concept of “usability” has been developed by WHO in order to assess the overall quality of death registration data. Usability is defined as the percentage of all deaths which are registered with meaningful cause-of-death information. Usability is calculated as completeness (i.e. the percentage of all deaths in a geographic area that are registered with medical certification of cause of death) multiplied by the proportion of registered deaths that are assigned a meaningful cause of death. The latest national death registration data reported to WHO are categorized by their usability as low, medium or high.
Causes of death explorer
WHO assessment as of November 2020 based on most recent years of available country data. Information on the assessment method is published in WHO methods and data sources for country-level causes of death 2000-2019 , pp7-15, WHO, Dec 2020
The assessment of data quality was based on data made available to WHO referring to years in the period 2008 to 2019. Data quality may be lower in previous years.