Deaths from sepsis in the UK by country and age

​FOI Reference: FOI/2022/4365

You asked

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act (2000), could you please give me full disclosure of ALL recorded UK deaths (by month/year) from SEPSIS. If the data is not in Excel format, can you give me both the grand totals and also filter the data by country and age group.

We said

Thank you for your enquiry.

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. National Records Scotland (NRS) and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for statistics pertaining to Scotland and Northern Ireland. They can be contacted at foi@nrscotland.gov.uk and info@nisra.gov.uk respectively.

Our mortality data comes from the information collected at death registration. All 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

The ICD-10 cause codes we use for Sepsis are:

• A39.2 - Acute meningococcaemia
• A39.3 - Chronic meningococcaemia
• A39.4 - Meningococcaemia, unspecified
• A40 - Streptococcal septicaemia
• A41 - Other Septicaemia

Deaths registered in England and Wales from 2013 to 2021

The accompanying download provides sepsis mortality figures for England and Wales, including non-residents, England, Wales, and Non-Residents with age disaggregation for 2013 to 2021.

This information was downloaded from our explorable dataset on our NOMIS webservice. Please see the following instructions, should you wish to extract any tables in the future:

• Select the geography (England and Wales, regional or by local authority).  
• Select years - 2013 to 2021 or all
• Select age - all ages or 5-year age bands
• Select gender - total or male/female
• Select rates - all deaths, rates or percentage of population for example
• Select cause of death (ICD10 code search is available or use the codes provided above)  
• Select format (Excel or CSV for example)

Historic data for England and Wales

The following link provides deaths from 2001 to 2021 by ICD-10 code in England and Wales: Deaths registered in England and Wales - 21st century mortality

For pre 21st Century deaths, please use the following link to our 20th Century Mortality files.

If this does not meet your needs, we can create a custom user requested data set. These datasets are subject to disclosure control, legal frameworks, resource and agreement to costs under the ONS Charging policy

If you would like to discuss further, or obtain a quote for a special tabulation of data please contact the HALE Customer Services Team on Health.Data@ons.gov.uk