Statistical databases of the World Health Organization (WHO)

The WHO Mortality database (MDB) and the Health for All Statistical dataBase (HFA-DB) contain data on about 600 health indicators, more specifically: basic demographic and socio-economic indicators; lifestyle and environment-related indicators; mortality, morbidity and disability indicators; hospitalization, health care resources, health care utilization and expenditure indicators.

The HFA-DB provides the following indicators in each country: number of hospitalizations for circulatory system diseases, ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease; incidence of ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease. In this database morbidity indicators are not available by ICD code, sex and age. Often, they are not even available for the same calendar year.
Consult available data (pdf 35 kb).


EUROSTAT – Statistical Office of the European Communities

EUROSTAT is an important source of data at the European level: it provides statistical health data for all countries of the European Union as well as for Iceland, Switzerland and Norway. The database combines data from WHO, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and OECD. Data on cardiovascular disease are presented in the fourth chapter of the Report Key data on health 2000 – data 1985-1995.
Consult available data on:

• all-cause mortality (proportional mortality rate) (pdf 43 kb)
• ischaemic heart disease (pdf 33 kb)
• cerebrovascular diasease (pdf 36 kb).

OECD – Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation
It provides the OECD-health data 2002 software package, which is an interactive database for comparative analyses of health systems in the thirty member countries. It is available for a fee on CD-ROM, purchasable on-line from OECD web pages.


MONICA – WHO Project
The MONICA project – MONItoring of CArdiovascular diseases – was launched at the beginning of the 1980s with the aim of assessing whether the decline in CHD mortality registered in some countries was real and, if so, how much of it could be attributed to reduction in incidence and how much to reduction in case fatality. In order to answer this question, MONICA project monitored 37 populations from 21 countries for 10 years in order to measure attack rates and case fatality of coronary and cerebrovascular events, treatments during acute phase and the distribution of risk factors using a standardized methodology.