Major shift: Mortality rate decreases in infectious diseases

A 93 per cent drop has been witnessed in the number of deaths caused by tetanus between 1990 to 2013, however, the number of mortalities owing to chronic kidney disease and diabetes over the same period increased. This was revealed in a new, comprehensive analysis of trend data from 188 countries titled “Global regional and national age-sex specific all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death, 1990-2013: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013”, published in the respected medical journal The Lancet. The study was conducted by an international consortium of researchers coordinated by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, according to a press release. The research revealed that since 1990, Pakistan saw a marked decline in mortality rates from a number of diseases. Deaths caused by tetanus decreased 93 per cent, and diarrheal diseases by 50 per cent from 1990...