§ Sir Ralph HowellTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what were(a) the 20 most usual causes of death in descending order and (b) the 20 least usual causes of death in ascending order; and what was (i) the number and (ii) the percentage of deaths from each cause for each of the last 10 years. [23601]
§ Mr. HoramThe ninth revision of the international classification of diseases categorises causes of death and disease into 17 broad chapters which individually cover diseases of the various body systems, infectious diseases, congenital anomalies, injury and poisoning.
Individual causes within each chapter have their own three-digit code and most of these three-digit codes are further subdivided by a fourth digit.
Ranking causes in terms of the comparative numbers of deaths can be done in terms of individual three-digit codes, four-digit codes, or groups thereof. According to which level of detail is chosen, different rankings will result.
784WCauses of death at both the three and four-digit levels can be found in table 2 of "Mortality statistics: cause', series DH2, copies of which are available in the Library. A table giving five leading causes is published each year in the appendix tables of the Department of Health's volume "On the State of the Public Health", copies of which are available in the Library.