Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

e-mail contact : ESTAT-SDG-MONITORING@ec.europa.eu. 

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 3 on good health and well-being.  SDG 3 aims to ensure health and well-being for all at all ages by improving reproductive, maternal and child health; ending the epidemics of major communicable diseases; reducing non-communicable and mental diseases.

The indicator addresses the same topic as the following global SDG indicators: 3.3.1 "Number of new HIV infections per 1,000 uninfected population, by sex, age and key populations", 3.3.2 "Tuberculosis incidence per 100 000 population" and 3.3.4 "Hepatitis B incidence per 100 000 population".

Main prerequisite for meeting these objectives are universal health coverage; access to sexual and reproductive health-care services and to safe, affordable and effective medicines and vaccines for all. Standardised death rates that are used in this indicator take into account that countries with larger shares of older inhabitants also have higher death rates.

The indicator measures the standardised death rate of tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis (International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes A15-A19_B90, B15-B19_B942 and B20-B24). The rate is calculated by dividing the number of people dying due to selected communicable diseases by the total population.

Data on causes of death (COD) refer to the underlying cause which - according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) - is "the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death, or the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury". COD data are derived from death certificates. The medical certification of death is an obligation in all Member States.

The data are presented as standardised death rates, meaning they are adjusted to a standard age distribution in order to measure death rates independently of different age structures of populations. This approach improves comparability over time and between countries. The standardised death rates used here are calculated on the basis of the standard European population referring to the residents of the countries.

Number per 100 000 persons.

Calendar year.

The indicator is produced according to the high-level quality standards of European Statistics. Details on accuracy can be found in the metadata of the source datasets (see link to related metadata).

ESS

Data source: European Statistical System (ESS).
Data provider: Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat), based on data reported by the countries.

Every year

Indicator is updated annually. Complete and updated ESS data release information can be accessed via Eurostat release calendar.

> T+2 years

New data points are disseminated within three years after the reference year at latest.

Eurostat asks for the submission of final data for the year N at N+24 months. Some countries are able to transmit data to Eurostat already at N+18 and Eurostat publishes the data as soon as it is validated. In exceptional cases, countries are able to submit data with a delay of only 1 year (N+12), however this is not to be expected from a large number of countries.

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and Türkiye.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States respectively other presented countries.

> 10 years

Presented time series (including EU aggregates) starts in 2002.

> 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological break is longer than 4 data points.

Due to the fact that 2011 data is the first data collection with a legal basis (and few changes in the requested variables and breakdowns), the data between 1994-2010 and starting from 2011 are not always comparable (In part due to the different groupings of causes of deaths).

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

See table sdg_03_41

Eurostat dedicated section on SDGs: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/overview

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