Technical notes

· All mortality-based and most other indicators in the database are calculated by WHO/Europe using reported raw mortality data or numerators of corresponding indicators. The use of the same calculation methods and denominators increases comparability between countries and consistency across calculated rates (indicators).

· Life expectancy is calculated using Wiesler’s method. The age disaggregation of mortality data is: 0, 1–4, 5–9, 10–14, … 80–84, 85+.

· Averages for some country groupings, including the European Region average, are population-weighted averages. They are normally calculated when a minimum of 50% of the countries have data for a given indicator for a selected period. The number of countries included in the average calculations for different indicators will therefore vary. Also, as new data are received, more countries will meet the criteria for inclusion in the appropriate average calculations, with the result that averages for the same indicator and year may vary between different issues of the database. To ensure that a time-series includes the same countries throughout, data are checked by country and year and missing values are estimated. The program uses linear interpolation to calculate the missing values between years, and the values of the first and last available years are repeated for the missing years at the beginning and end of the period. For these reasons, averages for country groupings should be used and interpreted with caution.

· Age-standardized death rates (SDR) are calculated using the direct method, i.e. they represent what the crude rate would have been if the population had the same age distribution as the European standard population, as follows.

Age group (years)	European standard population
0	1600
1–4	6400
5–9	7000
10–14	7000
15–19	7000
20–24	7000
25–29	7000
30–34	7000
35–39	7000
40–44	7000
45–49	7000
50–54	7000
55–59	6000
60–64	5000
65–69	4000
70–74	3000
75–79	2000
80–84	1000
85 +	1000
Total	100000