GENEVA, Sept 10: Nearly 800,000 people commit suicide each year -- more than those killed by war and homicide or breast cancer, the World Health Organization said Monday, urging action to avert the tragedies, reports https://www.who.int/.
In a fresh report, the UN health agency said that the global suicide rate had fallen somewhat between 2010 and 2016, but the number of deaths has remained stable because of a growing global population.
"Despite progress, one person still dies every 40 seconds from suicide," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement, insisting that "every death is a tragedy for family, friends and colleagues."
The global suicide rate in 2016 -- the last year for which data was available -- stood at 10.5 per 100,000 people.
Progress in suicide prevention activities in some countries, but much more is needed, WHO said.
The number of countries with national suicide prevention strategies has increased in the five years since the publication of WHO’s first global report on suicide, said the World Health Organization in the lead-up to World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September.
But the total number of countries with strategies, at just 38, is still far too few and governments need to commit to establishing them.
Suicide rate highest in high-income countries; second leading cause of death among young people