Published 25th Aug, 2023

By Tola Owoyele

Nigeria has been ranked the country with the 15th highest mortality rate in the world by WorldPopulationReview.com, a US-based organisation that specialises in the delivery of up-to-date global population data and demographics.

In a report that was made available to FIJ by the organisation, Bulgaria was ranked as the country with the highest mortality rate in the world. The report also recognised Ukraine and Latvia as the second and third on the list of countries with high death rates in the world.

Other countries that made the report’s top 10 were Lesotho, Lithuania, Serbia, Croatia, Romania, Georgia and Russia.

Nigeria was in the 15th position, a step behind Chad and a step ahead of Sierra Leone.

mortality rate — Nigeria Lying Between Chad and Sierra Leone

The United Kingdom and the United States of America were 45th and 58th respectively on the list.

The data was arrived at after certain factors such as poor health care systems, war, conflicts and gun deaths were considered. Other factors were demographic crisis (when the death rate was higher than the birth rate), HIV/AIDS, cancer, tuberculosis, stroke, poor nutrition, hunger, respiratory infections and heart disease.

Each country’s death rate was expressed as the number of deaths per 1,000 people in a year.

According to the report, except for Ukraine and Russia, two countries that are currently at war with each other, the European countries that made the top 10 list recorded a high number of deaths and a very low number of births in the same year.

The 10 countries with the lowest mortality rate in the report were Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, Jordan and Solomon Islands.

The countries with low mortality rates were reported to have advanced and accessible health care, better-informed citizens, healthier nutritional options and higher living standards overall. They were predominantly middle-eastern countries.

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