The First World Health Assembly, on recommendation of the International Conference, prescribed on July 24, 1948, the use of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, Injuries, and Causes of Death by its member nations. Thus, the first international morbidity-mortality code came into being. This fact is of significance to the medical profession, particularly those interested in comparability and uniformity of useful morbidity statistics produced by hospitals, clinics and medical insurance plans. Also of significance is the international adoption of a uniform medical certificate of causes of death on which will be based a new procedure for selecting the cause of death to be tabulated. In this new procedure, the physician plays the determining role by indicating the underlying cause to be tabulated.
Every ten years, it has been an international tradition to revise and modernize the international list of causes of death. In accordance with this tradition, an international conference