You asked
Please provide the most recently recorded five year period, broken down into year-by-year data where available.
Number of death certificates issued in England and Wales on which codes for “chicken pox” or “varicella” are mentioned.
Number of death certificates issued in England and Wales on which codes for “shingles” and “herpes zoster” are mentioned.
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Cause of death is coded using version 10 of the international classification of diseases (ICD-10). Deaths to chicken pox or varicella would be coded to B01, whilst deaths to shingles or herpes zoster would be coded to B02.
Our annual publications provide death statistics by underlying cause. The selection of the underlying cause of death is based on ICD rules and is made from the condition or conditions reported by the certifier, as recorded on the certificate. The underlying cause of death is defined by WHO as:
the disease or injury that initiated the train of events directly leading to death
the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury
Number of deaths by age-group, sex and underlying cause of death for 2013-2016 are available from our explorable dataset: https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/query/select/getdatasetbytheme.asp?theme=73
For previous years, this is available in table 5 of our Deaths registered in England and Wales (Series DR) publication:
We do not routinely publish cause of death statistics for mentions of causes. However this data can be obtained from the customer services team of the Vital Statistics Outputs Branch.
Special extracts and tabulations of mortality data for England and Wales are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: mortality@ons.gov.uk. We recommend that you contact the Mortality Analysis team directly in order to discuss your data requirements in more detail.
Such enquiries should be made to:
Vital Statistics Outputs Branch
Office for National Statistics
Segensworth Road
Titchfield
Fareham
Hampshire
PO15 5RR
Tel: +44 (0)1329 444 110
E-mail: vsob@ons.gov.uk
As the only information that can be provided is already available to you via this route, we consider that s.21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S.21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.