News

An average of 34 animal-related deaths occur in Australia every year, according to an updated fact sheet released today. 

The fact sheet, Animal-related deaths in Australia, reviewed the circumstances of 713 deaths reported to an Australian coroner and made several key findings, including:

• Most animal-related deaths involved land mammals (505, or 70.8%), including horses (222 deaths), bovine (92 deaths), dogs (82 deaths) and kangaroos (53 deaths). 
• Males were over-represented, comprising 67.7% of animal-related deaths (compared to 32.3% involving females). 
• All deaths due to reptiles and amphibians involved either snakes (50 deaths) or crocodiles (25 deaths). 
• Bees were the most common insect contributing to death, with 45 deaths occurring due to bee sting anaphylaxis. There were more deaths involving bees than either sharks (39 deaths) or crocodiles (25 deaths).
• Despite the prevalence of non-fatal injuries from spiders, there were no deaths identified between 2001 and 2021 that were confirmed to have involved a spider bite.

View the fact sheets

This Sunday is World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims (External link), an event that acknowledges those who have died or been injured on the world’s roads, and advocates for action to reduce road trauma.

The NCIS is a valuable data collection that supports the development of death and injury prevention strategies by providing access to coronial data for death investigation and research.

NCIS Fatal facts (External link) is a unique tool that allows public access to Australian coronial recommendations. Users can search the tool by a variety of topic tags. A search using the land vehicle tag can identify summaries of relevant deaths and associated coronial recommendations made to improve public health and safety.

A variety of organisations use NCIS data to conduct research into transport deaths. Links to relevant research publications are available on the NCIS website (External link).

Every quarter we release operational statistics to assist users in interpreting search results and data reports. The statistics include figures by year and jurisdiction about case closure rates and document attachment in the NCIS. Figures about ICD-10 inclusion are provided biannually.

Our operational statistics have been updated and are now available online.

View operational statistics

Supplementary data sourced from Safe Work Australia for 2023 cases has been uploaded to the NCIS.

Read the System update for further information

The NCIS Annual report 2023-24 is now available. It provides details of NCIS operations and achievements during the 2023-24 financial year, and the NCIS’ financial position as at 30 June 2024.

Significant progress was made towards the NCIS’ mission to provide comprehensive coronial data to those who need it and vision to save lives through the power of data in the last year. Information detailing progress is available in the Key achievements and Operational report sections.

Read the annual report

An average of 167 intentional self-harm deaths of construction workers occur in Australia every year, according to our new fact sheet released today.

The fact sheet, Intentional self-harm deaths of construction industry workers in Australia, reviewed the circumstances of 3,514 deaths reported in Australia and made several key findings, including:

• The largest proportions of deaths were among building and plumbing labourers (26.2%, n=922), carpenters and joiners (9.4%, n=332 deaths) and electricians (9.0%, n=316).
• A significantly higher proportion of deaths involved males (99.3%, n=3,491) than females (0.7%, n=23). This is higher than the proportion of male intentional self-harm deaths across all employed people (83.4%).
• There were 591 deaths of construction industry workers aged under 25 years. Construction industry workers who died due to intentional self-harm were more likely to be younger (16.8% aged under 25 years), compared to people employed in any occupation (11.9%).
• The highest proportions of construction industry worker intentional self-harm deaths were reported to coroners in New South Wales (30.4%), Victoria (25.4%) and Queensland (18.2%).
   

View fact sheets

View media release (PDF, 105.26 KB) (External link)

Edition 80 of Fatal facts is now available.

The edition covers cases closed by an Australian coroner between January and March 2024.

Fatal facts is a unique service providing access to coronial recommendations from across Australia. It is a publicly accessible online tool that enables searching for coronial recommendations by topic.

Cases are added to the tool regularly by the NCIS Unit. NCIS users with authorised access can look up further case information using the NCIS number assigned to each case summary.

View Fatal facts

Every quarter we release operational statistics to assist users in interpreting search results and data reports. The statistics include figures by year and jurisdiction about case closure rates and document attachment in the NCIS. Figures about ICD-10 inclusion are provided biannually.

Our operational statistics have been updated and are now available online.

View operational statistics

We are excited to launch our brand new series of NCIS Classroom sessions designed to assist approved users searching in the NCIS. All sessions are based on the how-to guides available on the NCIS website (External link).

Classroom sessions are held monthly and rotate through a variety of topics:

• How to use the NCIS search functions
• How to search for demographics + drowning and water-related deaths
• How to search for case type/intent type + drug-related deaths
• How to search for multiple fatality events + fire-related deaths
• How to search for transport-related deaths

Sessions include a topic overview, example searches, tips for optimising your searches and time for questions with our knowledgeable NCIS team.

The first session is on Wednesday 17 July 2024.

Registration for all 2024 sessions is now open to approved NCIS users – registrations are essential.

Visit the Training schedule 2024 (External link) for all session dates and to register.

Court staff undertaking data entry and coding for the NCIS are an integral part of the NCIS and our vision to save lives through the power of data. 

We’ve refreshed our online coding support material to better assist NCIS coders with data entry and case closure. 

New coding resources now available are: 

• Coding standards contain guidance on specific data fields and how they should be coded for the NCIS. Each document is specific to a NCIS Online screen. 
• Coding scenarios contain guidance on specific mechanisms of injuries, how they should be coded for the NCIS and guidance on contributing factors that impact coding. Each document is specific to a Mechanism of injury (Level 1). 
• Jurisdictional additional coding advice for New South Wales and New Zealand coders.  

Coders should use the new coder support material for guidance. Further coding support is available by contacting ncis@ncis.org.au (External link) 

View the updated resources in How to code (External link) 

Edition 79 of Fatal facts is now available.

The edition covers cases closed by an Australian coroner between October and December 2023.

Fatal facts is a unique service providing access to coronial recommendations from across Australia. It is a publicly accessible online tool that enables searching for coronial recommendations by topic.

Cases are added to the tool regularly by the NCIS Unit. NCIS users with authorised access can look up further case information using the NCIS number assigned to each case summary.

View Fatal facts

There were over 9100 injury-related deaths in Australia in 2021, according to the latest in a series of fact sheets we released today.

Our Mortality data series 2021 fact sheets examined all closed case injury, drug-related and intentional self-harm deaths reported to an Australian coroner in the 2021 calendar year. This series provides yearly data on each type of death to enable comparisons over time.

View the fact sheets

Geocoding of residential, incident and death addresses for New Zealand cases in the NCIS has commenced.

Over 25,000 addresses have been assigned geographic boundary information and have been uploaded to the NCIS.

Read the System update for further information

Every quarter we release operational statistics to assist users in interpreting search results and data reports. The statistics include figures by year and jurisdiction about case closure rates and document attachment in the NCIS. Figures about ICD-10 inclusion are provided biannually.

Our operational statistics have been updated and are now available online.

View operational statistics 

An average of 791 antidepressant and antipsychotic-related deaths occur in Australia every year, according to a new fact sheet released today.

The fact sheet, Antidepressant and antipsychotic-related deaths in Australia, reviewed the circumstances of 16,627 deaths reported in Australia and made several key findings, including:

• Antidepressant and antipsychotic-related deaths increased from 2.1 deaths per 100,000 persons in 2001 to 4.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2021.
• Over half (53.1%, n=8821) of all antidepressant and antipsychotic-related deaths were unintentional, and over one third (36.5%, n=6063) were due to intentional self-harm.
• Sedatives and hypnotics such as alcohol (n=5667) and benzodiazepines (n=10,129) were frequently identified alongside antidepressant and antipsychotic drugs.

View fact sheets

Edition 78 of Fatal facts is now available.

The edition covers cases closed by an Australian coroner between July and September 2023.

Fatal facts is a unique service providing access to coronial recommendations from across Australia. It is a publicly accessible online tool that enables searching for coronial recommendations by topic.

Cases are added to the tool regularly by the NCIS Unit. NCIS users with authorised access can look up further case information using the NCIS number assigned to each case summary.

View Fatal facts

Several updates to NCIS Online have been made to enhance user experience:

• New restricted cases exclusion statement on search screens
• Amendments to search screens to allow tailored search options by jurisdiction which matches user permissions
• New functionality to the way a saved query is updated

Read the system update (External link) for further information

Supplementary data sourced from Births, Deaths and Marriages Registries for deaths reported to an Australian coroner has been uploaded to the NCIS:

• Indigenous status and Place of birth data for 2021 and 2022

Read the system update (External link) for further information

National Australian data for 2021 is now available for inclusion in NCIS data reports. More recent data is available for select jurisdictions.

NCIS data reports contain information about coronial data held in the collection, and are available on request from eligible organisations.

New requestors and those seeking an update to a previous data report can submit a request (External link) via our website. Fees apply.

Every quarter we release operational statistics to assist users in interpreting search results and data reports. The statistics include figures by year and jurisdiction about case closure rates and document attachment in the NCIS. Figures about ICD-10 inclusion are provided biannually.

Our operational statistics have been updated and are now available online.

View operational statistics