ATLAS · FIELD GUIDE
Heart Disease Deaths: The World's Leading Cause of Death, Country by Country
Ischaemic heart disease is the single largest cause of death on Earth. Why does its death rate vary so much between countries, and what does age-standardization change about the picture?
Ischaemic heart disease — where the blood supply to the heart muscle is narrowed or blocked — is the single leading cause of death on Earth, responsible for around 13% of all deaths worldwide. This map recolours every country by how many people die of it each year per 100,000, using the World Health Organization's Global Health Estimates.
Why the rate is age-standardized
Heart disease mainly kills older people. So a country with an old population will record more heart-disease deaths than a young one, even if the underlying risk is identical. A raw death rate would mostly tell you which countries are older — not where heart disease is actually most dangerous.
Age-standardization fixes this. It adjusts every country to a common age structure, so the map reflects the true burden of heart disease rather than the age of the population. That is what makes the comparison between, say, Japan and Nigeria meaningful.
What drives the differences
The variation across the map comes from a mix of causes: diet, smoking, blood pressure and diabetes, which shape how often heart disease develops; how well health systems prevent and treat it; and how deaths are recorded. Some of the highest age-standardized rates appear across parts of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, while many high-income countries have seen their rates fall over recent decades as smoking declined and treatment improved.
Reading the map
A higher rate means people in that country are more likely to die of heart disease at any given age. It captures both how often the disease occurs and how often it proves fatal — good prevention and treatment can pull a country's death rate down even where the disease is common. The figures are the most recent WHO estimates, shown with their source on the surface.
Frequently asked questions
What does this map measure?
The number of deaths from ischaemic heart disease each year per 100,000 people, age-standardized, from the World Health Organization's Global Health Estimates. Ischaemic heart disease — where the heart's blood supply is narrowed or blocked — is the world's single leading cause of death, responsible for around 13% of all deaths globally. The figure shown is the most recent WHO estimate.
What does age-standardized mean, and why does it matter?
Older populations have more deaths from heart disease simply because heart disease mainly affects older people. If you compared raw death rates, countries with many older people would look far worse, and young countries far better, even if the underlying risk were identical. Age-standardization adjusts every country to a common age structure, so the map reflects the actual burden of heart disease rather than just which countries happen to be older. It makes the comparison fair.
Why do the rates vary so much between countries?
Several reasons: differences in diet, smoking, blood pressure and diabetes, which drive heart-disease risk; differences in how well health systems prevent and treat it; and differences in how deaths are recorded. Some of the highest age-standardized rates are in parts of Central Asia and Eastern Europe, while many high-income countries have seen rates fall over recent decades as smoking declined and treatment improved.
Is a high rate the same as heart disease being more common there?
Largely, yes — a higher age-standardized death rate means people in that country are more likely to die of heart disease at any given age. But it reflects both how often heart disease occurs and how well it is treated. A country with good prevention and treatment can have a lower death rate even if the disease is reasonably common, because fewer cases prove fatal.
Where does the data come from?
From the World Health Organization's Global Health Estimates, the standard authoritative source for causes of death by country, accessed here through Our World in Data. The figures are the most recent available (2021) and each value carries its source and year.
SEE IT ON THE MAP
Everything in this guide is on the live Atlas map.