Avoidable mortality
In this infographic based on data from the WHO mortality database, we look at preventable mortality in OECD countries – which should be a guide to which areas payors might want to pay particular attention to when funding healthcare systems, and how much weight to ascribe to each area.
Preventable mortality here is defined as causes of death amongst people aged under 75 years that can be mainly avoided through effective public health and primary prevention interventions. Treatable (or amenable) mortality is defined as causes of death that can be mainly avoided through timely and effective health care interventions, including secondary prevention and treatment.
In cases when there was no strong evidence of predominance of preventability or treatability (as with ischaemic heart disease, stroke and diabetes), the causes were allocated on a 50:50 basis to the two categories to avoid double-counting of the same cause of death in both lists. The age threshold of premature mortality is set at 74 years for all causes.
The data on which this infographic is based is available here.
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