Chart (but not pick-me-up) of the day: Deaths around the world

I work in sanitation. its particularly tragic to see the number of deaths in sub-saharan africa due to diarrhoeal diseases.
good sanitation actually has a greater impact than access to clean water

The Haiti estimate doesn’t help the credibility of these numbers. The earthquake was cataclysmic and one of the deadliest on earth in the last millennium, but no credible estimate suggests that more than 400,000 people died, as this graph asserts. The soundest peer-reviewed, survey-based estimate is this one: around 150,000 or somewhat more. Even the government’s estimate is only 316,000. Not sure where they got this estimate of more than 400,000.

The thing that makes the low data quality the most clear, I think, is the chart’s claim that Eastern Europe has a death rate that is 40% higher than Africa. That seemed obviously false. Overdrinking is surely bad, but can it really compete with the the triple whammy of the AIDS pandemic, malaria, and an incredibly strained and under-resourced hospital system?

Indeed a quick check against the two sources listed on Wikipedia seemingly confirms my suspicion that the data is pretty bogus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_death_rate

Alison Cummins: You’re right of course: I ineptly misread the y-axis as # of deaths, not the death rate. A good lesson that I shouldn’t post on the fly. Thanks.