The most common victims of disease globally are older adults, men, and people living in low- and middle-income countries, though the specific profile shifts depending on the disease. Noncommunicable diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes account for 75% of all non-pandemic deaths worldwide, and they disproportionately strike people over 50. About 60 million people die each year from all causes combined, and the single deadliest disease on Earth is ischemic heart disease, killing 9.1 million people annually.
Heart Disease Kills More Than Any Other
Heart disease is responsible for 13% of all deaths worldwide, making it the planet’s leading killer for over two decades. It claims victims across nearly every demographic, but certain groups bear a heavier burden. In the United States, heart disease is the top cause of death for men and women alike, and for most racial and ethnic groups, including Black, Hispanic, White, American Indian, and Alaska Native populations. Black Americans are hit especially hard: 22.6% of all deaths in that group in 2021 were caused by heart disease.
Age is the strongest risk factor. Still, about 1 in 6 cardiovascular deaths in 2023 occurred in adults younger than 65, a reminder that heart disease is not exclusively an older person’s problem. Men develop heart disease earlier and die from it at higher rates than women at most ages, though the gap narrows significantly after menopause.
Men Die Earlier, but Women Live Sicker
One of the most consistent patterns in global health is what researchers call the male-female health-survival paradox: women live longer than men in nearly every country, yet they experience more years of chronic illness and disability. Men have higher death rates from heart disease, stroke, liver disease, tuberculosis, road injuries, and COVID-19. Women, on the other hand, carry a greater burden of conditions that cause long-term suffering rather than quick death, including low back pain, depression, and headache disorders.
Cancer patterns are also shifting in unexpected ways. In the United States, cancer rates among women aged 50 to 64 have now surpassed those in men of the same age (about 833 versus 831 per 100,000). Among adults younger than 50, women have an 82% higher cancer incidence rate than men, up from 51% two decades ago. Lung cancer incidence in women younger than 65 overtook that of men in 2021. Meanwhile, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias kill women at strikingly disproportionate rates: 68% of all dementia deaths globally occur in women.
Children in Low-Income Countries Face the Highest Risk
For children under five, the most common killers are complications from preterm birth, lower respiratory infections, birth-related complications, and malaria. These deaths are concentrated overwhelmingly in low- and middle-income countries, where poverty, limited healthcare, and environmental hazards intersect. Climate change is making this worse by expanding the range of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and dengue and increasing rates of diarrheal and respiratory illness in vulnerable populations.
The progress over the past two decades has been real but uneven. Deaths from diarrheal diseases dropped 45% between 2000 and 2021, and HIV/AIDS deaths fell by 61%. Lower respiratory infections still killed 2.5 million people in 2021, but that was 370,000 fewer than in 2000. The gains have come largely from vaccines, antibiotics, and clean water initiatives, but children in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia remain far more likely to die from preventable infections than children born in wealthier nations.
Noncommunicable Diseases Dominate Global Deaths
Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) killed at least 43 million people in 2021, making up three-quarters of all non-pandemic deaths. Heart disease, stroke, chronic lung disease, cancer, diabetes, kidney disease, and dementia are the major contributors. Several of these are accelerating. Diabetes deaths rose 95% between 2000 and 2021. Kidney disease deaths also jumped 95% in the same period, climbing from the 19th to the 9th leading cause of death globally. Lung cancer deaths increased from 1.2 million to 1.9 million.
These diseases are no longer concentrated in wealthy countries. Low- and middle-income nations now bear the majority of the NCD burden, partly because populations are aging and partly because diets, physical activity levels, and tobacco use have shifted. The difference is that people in poorer countries often develop these diseases younger and have less access to the treatments that extend life in high-income settings.
Infectious Diseases Still Take a Heavy Toll
While NCDs dominate the overall death count, infectious diseases remain devastating in specific populations. Tuberculosis has likely returned to being the world’s leading infectious killer now that COVID-19 deaths have declined, claiming 1.25 million lives in 2023. Malaria killed roughly 597,000 people that same year, with the vast majority of victims being young children in Africa. HIV-related causes killed an estimated 630,000 people in 2024, and 1.3 million people newly acquired the virus.
The victims of infectious disease are defined largely by geography and poverty. A child born in a malaria-endemic region of West Africa faces a fundamentally different disease landscape than one born in Western Europe. Access to clean water, vaccines, mosquito nets, and antiretroviral therapy determines who survives diseases that are entirely treatable in well-resourced settings.
Air Pollution as a Hidden Driver
Environmental exposure is an underappreciated factor in who becomes a disease victim. Air pollution contributed to an estimated 11.36 million deaths from both communicable and noncommunicable diseases in 2019. People living near heavy industry, high-traffic corridors, or areas where biomass fuels are burned indoors for cooking are at the greatest risk. This means the burden falls disproportionately on people in rapidly industrializing nations and on women and children in rural households that rely on wood or charcoal stoves.
Racial and Ethnic Disparities
Within countries, race and ethnicity shape disease outcomes in measurable ways. In the United States, Black and Native American populations face higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and several cancers compared to White populations. The projected 618,120 cancer deaths in the U.S. in 2025 will not be distributed evenly: Native American and Black individuals face the steepest barriers to prevention and equitable treatment. These disparities reflect differences in healthcare access, environmental exposures, chronic stress, and the accumulated effects of economic inequality rather than biological predisposition.