Deaths by cause: Malnutrition

[stoically]

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-number-of-deaths-by-cause?country=~OWID_WRL lists "Nutritional deficiencies" and
"Protein-energy malnutrition" with ~500,000 deaths in 2017, source being http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool.

Other sources say those numbers are in the 5-9 millions:

• https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/six-fold-increase-people-suffering-famine-conditions-pandemic-began
• https://www.dailysabah.com/world/7m-people-died-of-hunger-in-2020-world-food-programme-says/news
• https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/05/850470436/u-n-warns-number-of-people-starving-to-death-could-double-amid-pandemic?t=1633419705488

Is there a mistake in the GBD data or am I missing something?

[spoonerf]

Thanks for your interest in this @stoically. The Global Burden of Disease data (available on http://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool) has not yet been released for 2020 and so does not yet include the impacts of the pandemic on causes of death.

This data is due to be released in October 2021 and we will update it on our charts soon after. I expect that the number of deaths due to nutritional deficiencies will increase in line with the sources you've cited.

Hope that helps and thanks again for your interest.

[stoically]

Thanks for the reply @spoonerf. I was not talking about COVID-related effects or outdated data. The numbers of malnutrition deaths are in the millions for a long time according to other sources. E.g. https://borgenproject.org/15-world-hunger-statistics/ also states

Approximately 9 million people die of world hunger each year according to world hunger statistics; more than the death toll for malaria, AIDs and tuberculosis combined in 2012.

So I wonder how the GBD data is so contradictory to that?

[stoically]

And given the amount of undernourished people also didn't drop that much over the years, the GBD data regarding malnutrition deaths doesn't make any sense to me.

[spoonerf]

Hi @stoically - I suspect the difference is due to that GBD cause of death data only estimates cases where the recorded cause of death is 'Nutritional deficiencies'.

I believe the other sources (for example UNICEF) include deaths where deaths are attributable to nutritional deficiencies. Nutritional deficiencies increase the risk of dying from common infections, as well as increasing the frequency and severity of such infections, but in these cases the recorded cause of death would be the infection itself.

You can see comparable numbers on the GBD if you select the 'Context' as 'Risk' and select the risks associated with nutritional deficiencies. You should be able to see this here.

[stoically]

That explains it, thank you. Closing as this solves it for me.