“Deaths from infections that cause diarrhea and other intestinal illnesses have fallen sharply since 1990, according to a study published last week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

Using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2023, an international team of researchers examined mortality from enteric infectious diseases across 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2023. The category included diarrheal disease, invasive nontyphoidal Salmonella (iNTS) infections, enteric fever (typhoid and paratyphoid), and other intestinal infectious diseases, which are typically transmitted through the fecal-oral route by contaminated food, water, or hands and can be highly contagious. 

Their analysis found that the number of global deaths from enteric infectious diseases fell from 3.69 million in 1990 to 1.27 million in 2023, and the global age-standardized mortality rate fell from 74.1 per 100,000 to 16.4.”

From CIDRAP.