My interest in this topic comes from my personal experience of battling COVID-19 and being hospitalised for 12 days. During that difficult period, I witnessed the fear, sadness, hope and loss experienced by patients in the hospital. This experience made me realise how important health is in our lives and how much we need to understand diseases, their impact on society, and the importance of prevention and public health awareness.
Motivated by this experience, I wanted to explore the major causes of death in Australia and understand how they have changed over time. This report uses data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) covering the years 2015 to 2024. Through five data visualisations, I examine the leading causes of recorded deaths, compare different cause-of-death categories, and explore changes across the decade.
The purpose of this analysis is to make the patterns in the data easier to understand and encourage greater awareness of public health challenges. Although death statistics alone cannot explain why these patterns occur or determine which treatments and prevention strategies are most effective, they can help identify important trends that deserve further investigation. By connecting my personal experience with publicly available data, this report explores how data visualisation can help communicate meaningful information about health and mortality in Australia.
This report uses the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) underlying
causes-of-death data for 2015–2024. Keep
ABS_original_2015-2024.csv in the same folder as this R
Markdown file before knitting. The import uses a relative file path so
the report can be knitted reproducibly without an interactive file
picker.
Total records: 19460 Year range: 2015 to 2024 year cause_of_death icd_10_code deaths_persons
0 0 0 0
measure sex source_table source_workbook
0 0 0 0
source_publisher
0 [1] "Number of deaths"[1] "Persons"| year | n |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 1946 |
| 2016 | 1946 |
| 2017 | 1946 |
| 2018 | 1946 |
| 2019 | 1946 |
| 2020 | 1946 |
| 2021 | 1946 |
| 2022 | 1946 |
| 2023 | 1946 |
| 2024 | 1946 |
| year | n |
|---|---|
| 2015 | 19 |
| 2016 | 19 |
| 2017 | 19 |
| 2018 | 19 |
| 2019 | 19 |
| 2020 | 19 |
| 2021 | 19 |
| 2022 | 19 |
| 2023 | 19 |
| 2024 | 19 |
Missing death counts: 0 Negative death counts: 0 Min. 1st Qu. Median Mean 3rd Qu. Max.
3.0 558.5 3011.0 8843.3 10772.5 52819.0 This visualisation presents the six largest cause-of-death chapters recorded in Australia in 2024. The term “chapter” refers to a broad category used in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which groups related diseases and causes of death together. Neoplasms account for the largest share among the six selected chapters, representing approximately 35.1% of their combined deaths, followed by diseases of the circulatory system at 28.1%. Respiratory diseases and external causes account for smaller proportions, while nervous system diseases and mental and behavioural disorders make up the remaining shares. These results highlight the differences in recorded death counts across major cause categories. However, the percentages represent only the six chapters included in this chart, rather than all deaths in Australia.
This visualisation compares recorded deaths across the six leading ICD-10 cause-of-death chapters in Australia from 2015 to 2024. Neoplasms show an overall upward trend and have the highest recorded death counts throughout the period. Diseases of the circulatory system remain another major category, although their counts fluctuate over time. The other selected chapters show different patterns, with some increasing more gradually across the decade. Overall, the chart highlights that recorded death counts do not change uniformly across cause-of-death categories. However, these figures alone cannot explain the reasons behind the observed changes. They represent recorded death counts rather than age-standardised mortality rates, and the latest figures may be subject to revision.
This chart focuses on the broad ICD-10 chapter for neoplasms in the ABS dataset.
This line chart examines recorded deaths attributed to neoplasms in Australia between 2015 and 2024. The number of deaths remained relatively stable from 2015 to 2017, followed by a noticeable increase in 2018 and 2019. A decline is visible in 2020, after which the recorded count rises again from 2021 onwards, reaching its highest point in 2024. This pattern shows that the recorded number of deaths attributed to neoplasms increased overall during the period, although the chart alone cannot explain the reasons for these changes. The figures represent death counts rather than age-standardised mortality rates, and the latest years may be subject to revision.
This bar chart ranks the ten largest cause-of-death chapters in Australia in 2024 by their recorded number of deaths. Neoplasms rank first, followed by diseases of the circulatory system, with a noticeable gap between these two categories and the remaining chapters. Diseases of the respiratory system rank third, while external causes, diseases of the nervous system, and mental and behavioural disorders also appear among the ten largest categories. The horizontal bars make it easier to compare the number of recorded deaths across categories and identify which chapters account for the largest counts. These results describe the number of deaths recorded in each chapter, rather than the risk of death for individuals.
This slope chart focuses on how recorded death counts changed between 2015 and 2024 for the six cause-of-death chapters with the highest counts in 2024. Unlike Visualisation 1, which compares the selected chapters’ shares of their combined total in 2024, this chart compares the number of deaths at two points in time. Recorded deaths attributed to neoplasms increased from 46,640 in 2015 to 52,819 in 2024, while deaths attributed to diseases of the circulatory system declined. The four other selected chapters—respiratory diseases, external causes, nervous system diseases, and mental and behavioural disorders—recorded higher counts in 2024 than in 2015. The different slope directions make these contrasting changes easier to see. These are raw recorded death counts, however, and do not by themselves show changes in individual mortality risk or explain the causes of the observed differences.
Years covered: 2015 to 2024 Measure: Number of deaths Sex: Persons | year | cause_of_death | icd_10_code | deaths_persons |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | CHAPTER II Neoplasms (C00-D48) | C00-D48 | 52819 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER IX Diseases of the circulatory system (I00-I99) | I00-I99 | 42298 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER X Diseases of the respiratory system (J00-J99) | J00-J99 | 17088 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XX External causes of morbidity and mortality (V01-Y98) | V01-Y98 | 13307 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER VI Diseases of the nervous system (G00-G99) | G00-G99 | 12544 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER V Mental and behavioural disorders (F00-F99) | F00-F99 | 12337 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER IV Endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases (E00-E90) | E00-E90 | 8514 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XI Diseases of the digestive system (K00-K93) | K00-K93 | 7958 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XIV Diseases of the genitourinary system (N00-N99) | N00-N99 | 5002 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XVIII Symptoms, signs and abnormal clinical and laboratory findings, not elsewhere classified (R00-R99) | R00-R99 | 3781 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER I Certain infectious and parasitic diseases (A00-B99) | A00-B99 | 3108 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XIII Diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue (M00-M99) | M00-M99 | 1820 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XII Diseases of the skin and subcutaneous tissue (L00-L99) | L00-L99 | 780 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XVII Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities (Q00-Q99) | Q00-Q99 | 650 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER III Diseases of the blood and blood-forming organs and certain disorders involving the immune mechanism (D50-D89) | D50-D89 | 634 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XVI Certain conditions originating in the perinatal period (P00-P96) | P00-P96 | 566 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER VIII Diseases of the ear and mastoid process (H60-H95) | H60-H95 | 19 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER VII Diseases of the eye and adnexa (H00-H59) | H00-H59 | 13 |
| 2024 | CHAPTER XV Pregnancy, childbirth and the puerperium (O00-O99) | O00-O99 | 5 |
The dataset reports death counts rather than individual-level mortality risks or age-standardised mortality rates. Interpret counts in the context of Australian Bureau of Statistics definitions and population changes over time.
The ABS release may assign different revision statuses to different years. Broad ICD-10 categories can overlap with detailed subcategories, so do not sum all rows in the original dataset indiscriminately.
This report used ABS underlying causes-of-death data to explore patterns in Australian recorded deaths from 2015 to 2024. Across the five visualisations, neoplasms consistently account for the largest recorded death count among the selected broad chapters, while circulatory diseases remain another major category. The comparison across years also shows that the leading chapters do not all change in the same direction or at the same pace. These findings describe recorded counts rather than age-standardised mortality rates, and they do not by themselves explain the causes of observed changes. The latest years may be revised by the ABS, so the results should be interpreted in the context of the source’s definitions and revision status.
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2025, 14 November). Causes of death, Australia, 2024 (underlying causes of death data cubes, including Table 1.2). Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/causes-death/causes-death-australia/latest-release
The underlying causes-of-death data were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Disclose software, assistance, and any generative AI use in accordance with the assessment instructions and RMIT academic integrity requirements.