Asthma deaths by London Borough

FOI REF: FOI-2023-1459

You asked

I should be grateful if you’d disclose, in Excel format, the total number of asthma deaths and also the total number of deaths for each London Borough, for each of the years you hold these data.

We said

Thank you for your request. 

We are responsible for the production of mortality data for England and Wales, this is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration.

All of the conditions mentioned on the death certificate are coded using the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). From all of these causes an underlying cause of death is selected using ICD-10 coding rules. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as: 

a) the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death, or 

b) the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury 

Deaths due to asthma are coded to ICD-9 Code: 493 or ICD-10: J45-J46. 

NOMIS allows you to filter and extract mortality data by selected causes and area. Please open the associated download 'London Boroughs total deaths' to access the total number of deaths between 2013 and 2021 in each London Borough. Please note, if you include asthma deaths into this search, the numbers may be rounded due to small numbers in some of the boroughs. You can add J45-J46 to your search by selecting them in the 'Underlying cause' sub heading. 

If you wish to receive information prior to 2013, this is available to request via our bespoke services route. Such services would be subject to legal frameworks, disclosure controls, resources and agreement of costs. If you would like to request this bespoke dataset, please contact health.data@ons.gov.uk to discuss your enquiry further. Please note, there may be a charge for this work which would be subject to our charging policy. As this information is reasonably accessible via another route, even if only accessible on payment, Section 21(2)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) applies).