You might want to play with this

An on-line app from the Guardian that let's you look at death rates globally or regionally, by age, from various causes, in 1990 and 2010.

Worldwide, heart disease and circulatory disease are by far the leading cause of death. No surprise there, but you might be surprised by the importance of chronic respiratory diseases in carrying off the old folks. Unintentional injuries -- falls -- aren't way up there in the rankings but they're pretty important. A broken hip is very often the beginning of the end.

There have also been some big changes since 1990. HIV of course has jumped way up, while other communicable diseases have tended to go down in rank.

Anyway, you get to visualize it all sorts of different ways -- try it, it's very informative.