It is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, which, as the leading cause of death worldwide, kills 17.7 million people annually.
Lung cancer, the largest single cause of cancer mortality in the U.S. and worldwide, kills more people every year than cancers of the breast, prostate and colon combined.
In the 1930 31 season alone the worldwide kill of blue whales exceeded 29,000.
After pneumonia, diarrhea is the deadliest threat to infants worldwide, killing about 700,000 every year.
The bleaching episode, which affected reefs worldwide, killed some 35% of the corals in the northern and central sectors of the GBR.
In hindsight, of course, these announcements were the first official harbingers of AIDS — the catastrophic pandemic that would infect more than 60 million people (and counting) worldwide, killing at least half that number.
Soon, many AIDS activists and health officials criticized the Reagan administration as being slow to investigate and find effective therapies for the disease, which has now infected an estimated 65 million people worldwide, killing 25 million of them.
After months in denial, China is acknowledging that an unusual pneumonia epidemic that started here last November is probably the same disease that has recently infected hundreds worldwide, killing dozens.
The flu-type disease, first seen in China, has infected about 4,200 people worldwide, killing 251.See article: The dragon wheezesOfficials in Toronto reacted with fury after the WHO issued a travel warning for Canada's largest city where SARS has killed 16.
However, the single intervention that would save the greatest number of lives around the world is already known the withdrawal of the most toxic pesticides from agricultural practice in rural Asia.The World Health Organisation considers pesticide poisoning to be the major cause of suicide worldwide, killing around 300,000 people every year.
Globally, cervical cancer is the third most common cancer in women worldwide, killing >275,000 every year.
