A quarter of all deaths could be avoided with better healthcare: report John Middleton, Vice President for Policy for the Faculty of Public Health, said: "These figures show that too many people in England and Wales are dying from preventable illness and disease. Inequalities in income and opportunity mean that the poorest in society often have the worst health. While we are each responsible for our own health, this data reminds us why we need skilled public health professionals to make sure that the big decisions about our health are based on evidence of what works. We also need a comprehensive strategy from government to protect people's health. This should include labelling food with the traffic light labelling system to make it easier to choose healthy options, setting a minimum price per unit of alcohol to reduce the harms it causes and implementing plain packs for all tobacco products. The ONS definition of avoidable death is where in light of medical knowledge and technology at the time of death, all or most of the deatsh from that cause could have been avoided through good quality healthcare or by public health interventions in the boardest sense. The document said this was subject to age limits where appropriate, with for example, only cancer deaths in the under 75s considered avoidable. The single biggest cause of avoidable death was from heart disease which caused 21,800 deaths in 2010, the document said. It was the main cause of avoidable death for men and in women it was cancer of the throat and lung. The biggest decline in avoidable mortality was in cardiovascular diseases, which includes heart attacks and strokes, which dropped by almost half between 2001 and 2010, attributed mostly to the use of statins, the report said. Public Health Minister Anne Milton said: "Whilst it is good news that fewer people are dying from avoidable causes, there is still more to do so that everyone should have the same opportunity to lead a healthy life. Therefore we are refocusing our efforts on preventing illness and early diagnosis by providing the best quality NHS treatment and addressing the wider social causes of ill health and early death. For example, we know that alcohol-related illnesses are increasing - that's why we set out plans in our alcohol strategy to turn the tide against irresponsible drinking and cut the number of people drinking to harmful levels. David Stout, deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: "It is encouraging to see there has been a drop in the number of avoidable deaths over the past decade. NHS organisations have made real progress by making patient safety their highest priority. But these figures show that there is still a long way to go before we can say we have really tackled this issue. We know there NHS organisations are doing some really good work to prevent patient deaths. For example, ambulance services are saving more lives by increasing the numbers of critical care paramedics who can respond quickly to the most urgent cases. And hospitals have put a major focus on reducing deaths from blood clots in recent years through simple measures such as anti-clotting drugs and postoperative stockings. By increasing our efforts on preventative measures and ensuring we maintain the focus on patient safety, the NHS can ensure it is delivering the safest, highest quality service for patients.