The top three causes of death in the country from January to June of 2021 were

ischaemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, and neoplasms. Incidentally,

these were also the leading causes of death in the same period in 2020 with some
deviations in the ranking. During the first half of 2021, ischaemic heart diseases were
the leading cause of death with 56.76 thousand cases or 18.7 percent of the total
deaths in the country. This indicated an increase of about 17.4 percent from the
48.34 thousand deaths or 16.7 percent of the total deaths in the first six months of
2020. On the other hand, cerebrovascular diseases, now came in second with 30.80
thousand deaths (10.2% share) from being third in the previous year’s ranking. This
showed an increase of 0.7 percent from the 30.59 thousand cases (10.6% share) in
the same period in 2020. Neoplasms, commonly known as “cancer” were the third
leading cause which accounted for 27.34 thousand deaths (9.0% share) of the total.
Deaths due to diabetes mellitus (19.80 thousand or 6.5% share), which ranked fourth
in 2021, had an increase of 10.2 percent. Meanwhile, deaths due to COVID-19 virus
identified recorded 17.16 thousand cases (5.7% share) from January to June 2021
from 1.23 thousand cases (0.4% share) in the same period in 2020, making it the
fifth leading cause of death for that period.