You asked

Please provide the most up to date information about starvation and malnutrition deaths in the UK. If possible, please also provide pre 2010 figures.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

We are responsible for publishing mortality statistics for deaths registered in England and Wales, using the information supplied on the death certificate. The most recent year for which mortality statistics are available is 2018.

Mortality statistics for Scotland are available in the Vital Events Reference Tables for Scotland.

Mortality statistics for Northern Ireland are available in the Annual Report of the Registrar General for Northern Ireland.

Deaths are cause coded using the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). Deaths with an underlying cause of malnutrition are assigned the ICD-10 code E40-E46. To explore the number of deaths that can be attributed to these cause codes you can use our explorable dataset. To use our explorable dataset on the left hand side there are a number of options you can select:

  • Geography, select the geography you want the data for
  • Date, select the years you want the data for, there is data available from 2013 onwards
  • Age, select the age range you are interested in, if you want all ages select "total (all ages)"
  • Rates, number of deaths is default, rates can then be selected
  • Sex, select either sex or "Total" for both
  • Underlying cause (here select the malnutrition cause codes E40-E46)
  • Once you have made your selections on the left-hand side select "Download data" and an excel data download will be created for you.

Alternatively, we have previously published data on malnutrition which may be of interest to you.

Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: health.data@ons.gov.uk.