Sources: Shahbandi et al. (2022) [2] for MENA data; Alqahtani et al. (2025) [17] for smoking-attributable Saudi Arabia data. MENA and KSA figures are distinct and not directly comparable. Increase in total deaths reflects population growth despite declining age-standardized rates. The 95% UI for age-standardized death rate in 2019 was 78.2–97.6 per 100,000. —: data not available for the specified time point. MENA: Middle East and North Africa.
Declarations
Author contributions
AAA: Conceptualization, Investigation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. The author read and approved the submitted version.
Conflicts of interest
The author declares that there are no conflicts of interest.
Ethical approval
This study involved secondary analysis of publicly available, de-identified aggregate data and did not require institutional review board approval. No individual patient-level data were accessed at any stage of the analysis. All procedures were conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. The Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 data utilized in this study were collected under ethical approval from the University of Washington Institutional Review Board (STUDY00009060). Data from the Saudi General Authority for Statistics are collected under the authority of the Statistics Law and are publicly accessible in aggregate form.
Consent to participate
Not applicable. This study utilized only de-identified, publicly available aggregate data with no involvement of individual participants.
Consent to publication
Not applicable.
Availability of data and materials
All data analyzed in this study are publicly available. Global Burden of Disease Study 2021 data are available from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Global Health Data Exchange (https://ghdx.healthdata.org/gbd-results-tool). Saudi General Authority for Statistics mortality data are available at https://www.stats.gov.sa. World Health Organization Global Health Observatory data are available at https://www.who.int/data/gho.
Open Exploration maintains a neutral stance on jurisdictional claims in published institutional affiliations and maps. All opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the author(s) and do not represent the stance of the editorial team or the publisher.
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