Abu Dhabi: Iraq has announced its population exceeded 40 million people in 2020, its planning ministry said on Wednesday.
The population of Iraq reached 40,150,000, with 50.5 per cent men and 49.5 per cent women.
The official spokesman for the Ministry of Planning, Abdul Zahra Al Hindawi, said the annual population growth rate in 2020 was 2.6 per cent.
The working age population, from 15-64 years, was the highest among the age groups, reaching 56.5 per cent of the total population, followed by 0-14, which constituted 40.4 per cent, while those aged 65 years and over made up just3.1 per cent of the total.
The country has also revealed the top 10 causes of disease including cancer, AIDS and heart diseases, stressing that it was free from polio, malaria, bilharzia and diphtheria, local media reported.
Iraq’s Central Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Planning announced on Wednesday in a report posted on its website that the total number of cases of cancer disease in Iraq reached 31,502 in 2018.
“The number of male cancer patients reached 13,612 or 70.67 per 100,000 people, while the number of female patients was 17,890 or 94.84 per 100,000 people,” the statistics showed.
The number of deaths from all forms of cancer was 10,293, including 5,228 men and 5,065 women.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally, and is responsible for an estimated 9.6 million deaths in 2018. Globally, about 1 in 6 deaths is due to cancer, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Approximately 70 per cent of deaths from cancer occur in low- and middle-income countries.
The Iraqi official statistics showed the death rate for the top 10 causes of death in Iraq out of the total deaths for the year 2019 was estimated at 64.16 per cent, heart diseases recorded the highest death rate, at 12.03 per cent, followed by malignant tumors, 9.33 per cent, then cerebrovascular disease, at 8.4 per cent.
The number of HIV AIDS infections reached 204 in 2019, the largest number of infections appeared in men, at 172 cases, compared to 32 cases in women. As for the deaths due to this disease, it reached only 9 cases, including 8 cases for males and one case for females.
The number of transmissible disease cases registered in Iraq in 2019 was for scabies, at 54,583 cases, while the lowest number of transmissible disease cases was for cholera, with only two cases.
Iraq has recorded 616,259 COVID-19 infections since its outbreak in the country on March 24, 2020, while the number of deaths reached 13,018.