Ischaemic heart disease, a cardiovascular disease (a disease of the heart and blood vessels), was the world's biggest killer in 2023, causing about 9.5 million deaths, according to new estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) published on 2 October 2026.
Spread across a year, that is about 26,000 deaths a day. The daily figure is a calculation from the WHO's annual estimate (9.5 million divided by 365), not a number the WHO published.
The estimates appear in the WHO fact sheet "The top 10 causes of death" and come from its Global Health Estimates, which track more than 160 diseases and injuries a year from 2000 to 2023.
The disease was responsible for 16% of all deaths worldwide.
The WHO says no disease has added more deaths since 2000, with the yearly toll up by 3.0 million.
The ten leading causes of death together accounted for 33 million of the 61 million deaths worldwide in 2023, or 54%.
Stroke ranks second, with 6.8 million deaths (about 11% of the total), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a long-term lung disease, is third with 3.6 million (about 6%).
Lower respiratory infections, infections of the lungs and airways, rank fourth with 2.7 million deaths, back at their 2019 level.
Alzheimer's disease and other dementias are fifth with 2.1 million deaths, and the WHO says 66% of those deaths are women.
Diabetes is sixth with 2.0 million, more than double its 2000 toll, and cancers of the windpipe, airways and lungs are seventh with 1.8 million, up from 1.1 million in 2000.
Eight of the ten are noncommunicable diseases, long-term illnesses that do not spread from person to person.
They account for 47% of all deaths.
The WHO sorts countries into four income groups using World Bank classifications: low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high.
High-income countries are the only group where deaths from ischaemic heart disease fell, by 18% between 2000 and 2023.
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Stroke deaths there fell by 26%.
The two diseases stayed in the top three causes of death throughout, with 3.4 million deaths between them in 2023.
In lower-middle-income countries, deaths from ischaemic heart disease, stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease roughly doubled over the period, and the three moved into the top three causes of death.
In upper-middle-income countries, ischaemic heart disease deaths rose by nearly 1.8 million, the largest increase in numbers in any income group, moving the disease from second place to first.
In low-income countries, seven of the ten leading causes in 2023 were communicable diseases, meaning illnesses that spread between people.
Malaria, tuberculosis and HIV and AIDS remain on the list, though deaths from each have fallen sharply.
Lower respiratory infections have been the leading cause of death there since around 2010, except in 2021, with annual deaths above 350,000 throughout 2000–2023 and no notable downward trend.
COVID-19 has dropped out of the ten leading causes of death for the first time since the pandemic began in 2020.
The WHO estimates it caused 9.4 million deaths in 2021, when it ranked first, and 0.9 million in 2023, when it ranked fourteenth.
Deaths from HIV and AIDS fell 62% since 2000, from seventh place to twenty-second, while deaths from kidney diseases rose 86%, moving them from seventeenth to ninth.
The WHO text does not say what is driving the global rise in ischaemic heart disease deaths.
For high-income countries, it says deaths from most of the leading diseases are rising mainly because populations are ageing.
The figures are estimates, and the WHO says collecting accurate death records remains a major challenge, particularly in many low-income countries, where systems are often fragmented, incomplete or inconsistent.
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