You asked
I am looking to obtain the mortality and morbidity rates of sudden onset cardiac death within varying ethnicities world wide and various environments within the UK.
I would like to request all data pertaining to those individuals who have died as a result of sudden onset cardiac death and the subsequent categories. Please ensure that ethnicities are listed in the data.
We said
ONS only hold mortality data for England and Wales. For Scotland and Northern Ireland data you will need to contact National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Centre, respectively.
ONS mortality data comes from the information collected 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
Ethnicity is not recorded on the death certificate because it is possible that the informant for the deceased might not know, or provide, the correct information. Ethnicity is self-reported in census data and we have produced some recent analysis of COVID-19 deaths by ethnicity by linking death registration data to census information. We are currently unable to produce bespoke analysis which includes ethnicity due to the complex data linkage methods involved. It is only currently released as part of our official COVID outputs. However, we are looking to include ethnicity in some of our main annual publications in future.
Numbers of deaths registered in England and Wales between 2013 and 2019 by sex, age group, area of usual residence and underlying case, are available via NOMIS. You can find the ICD-10 codes that define 'sudden onset cardiac death' by using the WHO online ICD-10 code lookup.
You can find mortality data by underlying cause pre 2013 in our Deaths Registered Series and 21st century mortality publications.