Cyprus is the safest of 184 countries for a young person aged 15-29 according to a recent World Health Organisation (WHO) data.

According to the data, Cyprus with almost one death in every 4,763 youth ranks first among the 184 countries analysed with Sierra Leone being the most dangerous country in the world to be a young person in with one youth in every 150 having died there in 2015.

Denmark which halved its youth deaths from 2000 and 2015 is ranked fifth while the UK with one in every 3,030 is ranked just outside the top 10 safest countries behind Israel.

Nine of the most dangerous countries to be in are in Africa and include Siera Leone, the Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, Nigeria and Chad amongst others while young people in the United States are six times more likely to be murdered than their British counterparts.

Young people in the US are also more than three times likely to be killed in a car crash, twice as likely to commit suicide or overdose on drugs as their UK counterparts while liberal drug policies in the Netherlands may be the reason for a rate of drug related deaths to be exactly ten times lower than in the US.

Road injury, self-harm, interpersonal violence, drug use disorders and malignant neoplasms are the five leading causes of death among young people in the UK and the US although the US has a much higher death rate.

The study estimates that 350,000 young people died from traffic-related injuries in 2015 and although the problem concerns both developed and developing countries, the data shows different trends.

While deaths linked to traffic-related injuries rose by 110% in Ecuador in 2015, Spain managed to reduce the number of traffic-related deaths by 85%.

The second most common cause of death among young people is self harm according to WHO. Although the number of deaths from self-harm decreased, an estimated 220,000 people took their lives in 2015

Countries as diverse as Sri Lanka, Russia, New Zealand and Argentina have self-harm-related mortality rates over 20 per 100,000 for this age group, while nearly half of all young deaths in Iceland in 2015 were due to self-harm.

Source