Before you read on
If you are going through this, there is someone to call
All three lines are free and open 24 hours, nationwide. They support the person in crisis and the people around them.
- 0800 0767 · *0767Línea Vida — crisis care, run by ASSE since 2018
- 0800 1920Emotional support line — ASSE, Health Ministry and Voluntariado Juntos, since April 2020
- 911Emergency — immediate risk
This piece follows WHO guidance on reporting suicide. It describes no methods. It publishes no individual cases. The only method it names is objective 6 of the National Strategy, "restricting access to lethal means", because that is public policy and that is how the official document words it.
Own investigation · open data
Seven purchases against suicide in twenty-four years
Uruguay measures its suicide rate precisely and has published it since 1997. Across 1,639,165 state purchases since 2002, the word appears seven times. The 2021-2025 National Strategy does not ask for money: it asks for weekly hours.
State purchases mentioning suicide, since 2002
7
out of 1,639,165 purchases published in the state procurement record
The series
Twenty-eight measured years, and a break in 2015
The Health Ministry has published suicide mortality since 1997. The series has one hole: 2011, which the ministry skips in its table and MIDES publishes as a dot in its CSV. We do not fill it in.
Until 2014 the rate moves inside a narrow band. The 1997-2014 average is 16.25 per 100,000 people and the period high is 20.62, in 2002. From 2015 the band breaks upward: 18.55 that year, 20.54 the next, and it never falls back below 19.
The peak is 2022: 823 deaths and 23.20 per 100,000, the highest value in the whole series. Then it falls three years running. In 2025 there were 668 deaths and the rate was 19.16, the lowest since 2015.
The fall is real and the ministry itself asked that it not be read as a victory. The 2025 rate is still above every year before 2015. The level it returned to is the level at which the problem started.
Suicide rate in Uruguay, 1997-2025
Per 100,000 people. Source: Health Ministry, Vital Statistics and Epidemiology Division. No figure published for 2011.
| Year | Suicide rate |
|---|---|
| 1997 | 14.24 |
| 1998 | 15.76 |
| 1999 | 13.82 |
| 2000 | 17.02 |
| 2001 | 15.04 |
| 2002 | 20.62 |
| 2003 | 16.12 |
| 2004 | 15.71 |
| 2005 | 15.12 |
| 2006 | 16.23 |
| 2007 | 17.51 |
| 2008 | 15.94 |
| 2009 | 15.72 |
| 2010 | 16.19 |
| 2011 | — |
| 2012 | 17.74 |
| 2013 | 16.13 |
| 2014 | 17.40 |
| 2015 | 18.55 |
| 2016 | 20.54 |
| 2017 | 19.70 |
| 2018 | 20.25 |
| 2019 | 20.55 |
| 2020 | 20.30 |
| 2021 | 21.60 |
| 2022 | 23.20 |
| 2023 | 21.39 |
| 2024 | 21.35 |
| 2025 | 19.16 |
Precision
The ministry publishes the rate and not the population
A rate depends on two numbers: deaths and population. The ministry publishes the first and never the second. It can be derived: deaths divided by rate, times one hundred thousand.
Run that arithmetic and a jump appears. The 2024 rate (21.35 on 764 deaths) implies a population of 3,578,454. The 2025 rate (19.16 on 668 deaths) implies 3,486,430. A country's population cannot fall 2.6% in one year.
The statistics institute, working from the 2023 census, puts the country's all-time population peak at 3,510,305 people, reached in 2020, and projects a slow decline since. The implied denominators from 2020 to 2024 all sit above that peak: they come from the previous projection round. The 2025 one sits below it: it comes from the new one.
The consequence matters and it runs one way. A smaller denominator raises the rate. On the 2024 base, the 668 deaths of 2025 would give 18.67 instead of 19.16. The change of base does not inflate the 2025 improvement: it dampens it.
This is our arithmetic, not a ministry figure. We publish it because anyone can redo it with the two numbers the ministry does publish.
| Year | Implied population |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 3,518,248 |
| 2020 | 3,536,946 |
| 2021 | 3,509,259 |
| 2022 | 3,547,414 |
| 2023 | 3,566,620 |
| 2024 | 3,578,454 |
| 2025 | 3,486,430 |
Our own calculation: deaths ÷ rate × 100,000, using the figures the ministry publishes. · INE 2020: 3,510,305 · 2025 sobre la base de 2024: 18.67
The scale
It kills more than road crashes and more than homicides
The ministry itself makes this comparison in two official documents, and those are the only two years in which it published all three rates together.
In 2019 suicide was 20.55 per 100,000 people, road crashes 12.0 and homicides 11.2. In 2020 it was 20.3 against 10.7 and 9.9. In both years suicide nearly equals the sum of the other two.
The difference is in what the State buys for each. Road safety has a national agency, campaigns, road works and enforcement. Homicide has the entire police budget. Suicide has seven purchases in twenty-four years.
| Cause of death | 2019 | 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Suicide | 20.55 | 20.30 |
| Road crashes | 12.00 | 10.70 |
| Homicides | 11.20 | 9.90 |
Violent deaths in Uruguay · per 100,000 people
The measurement
The seven purchases, one by one
We searched the stem "suicid" across the seven text fields of every record: the description and classification of awarded line items, the award title, and the tender title, description and items. Across 2,185,037 records grouped into 1,639,165 purchases, seven come back. One in 234,166.
Three belong to the police health directorate and the health ministry, and they are the oldest. One belongs to the national education body and has no award recorded. The last three belong to the Montevideo city government, all from the same day in 2024.
The largest is from 2015. The police health directorate tendered "a suicide prevention and postvention response service operating for the D.N.S.P. across the whole national territory". The line item is a telephone line for 24 months. The award was recorded in March 2016, to Último Recurso, for 4,540,800 pesos. It is the only time in the corpus that the State tendered a prevention line.
Added up, the awards come to 5,033,280 nominal pesos over sixteen years. That total counts every record once, the same way the count of seven purchases does. Two of the city records are identical: same supplier, same amount, same date, same text. If they were one purchase filed twice, the total would be 4,953,380 and the count would be six.
| Year | Public body | Object | Supplier | Awarded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | Dirección General de la Salud (MSP) | 4,000 copies of a guide on suicide | DEL ESTE SOL S.R.L. | $ 24.680 |
| 2012 | Dirección Nacional de Sanidad Policial | Prevention and postvention training for about 70 staff | ÚLTIMO RECURSO | $ 213.000 |
| 2015 → 2016 | Dirección Nacional de Sanidad Policial | Prevention and postvention response service: telephone line, 24 months | ÚLTIMO RECURSO | $ 4.540.800 |
| 2022 | Consejo Directivo Central (ANEP) | 3,500 copies of the Health Promotion and Suicidal Behaviour Prevention Guide | — | no award in the record |
| 2024 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Suicide awareness workshop | ÚLTIMO RECURSO | $ 95.000 |
| 2024 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Suicide awareness workshop | INSTITUTO URUGUAYO DE NORMAS TÉCNICAS | $ 79.900 |
| 2024 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Suicide awareness workshop (record identical to the previous one) | INSTITUTO URUGUAYO DE NORMAS TÉCNICAS | $ 79.900 |
The workshop awarded to the Uruguayan Standards Institute is recorded that way in the city government's own classification. We could not confirm the object with a second source and publish it as filed.
The contrast
Seven purchases, and 2,540 defibrillators
One number on its own says nothing. We measured two others with exactly the same regular expression and the same seven fields.
"Mental health" appears in 167 purchases, worth some 199 million pesos. Almost all of that money is one thing: residential care services, mostly from the child welfare institute. That is institutional care, not prevention.
"Defibrillator" appears in 2,540 purchases, worth some 494 million pesos. It is the State's other device against a sudden, preventable death, and a law mandates it.
The comparison does not say the State should buy fewer defibrillators. It says that when a policy becomes a purchase, it leaves a trail and can be audited. Suicide prevention barely leaves a trail in this record.
State purchases by topic, 2002-2026
The supplier
Almost all of it was bought from the same NGO
Último Recurso is the Uruguayan organisation specialised in suicide prevention and postvention. We searched everything the State awarded it, by supplier identifier rather than by name: the corpus writes it with one space and with two.
Nine awards between 2012 and 2024, worth 5,652,598 nominal pesos, from three buyers: the police health directorate, the power utility and the Montevideo city government. Four of them do not say "suicide" in their text, so they are not among the seven: they say "postvention workshops", "training course" or "professional services".
Two facts organise this table. First: 80% of the total is a single contract, the 2016 telephone line. Second: since 2016 there is not one purchase from central government. The seven later awards come from a state-owned company and a city government.
| Year | Buyer | Object | Awarded |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Sanidad Policial | Training course | $ 213.000 |
| 2016 | Sanidad Policial | Telephone line rental, 24 months | $ 4.540.800 |
| 2023 | UTE | Professional services and travel allowances | $ 558.250 |
| 2023 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Course and workshop | $ 97.500 |
| 2023 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Postvention workshops | $ 14.000 |
| 2023 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Postvention workshops | $ 22.448 |
| 2024 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Training course | $ 105.000 |
| 2024 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Suicide awareness workshop | $ 95.000 |
| 2024 | Intendencia de Montevideo | Postvention workshops | $ 6.600 |
The policy
The National Strategy does not ask for money: it asks for hours
The National Honorary Commission for Suicide Prevention has existed since 2004, created by Decree 378/004. Four ministries sit on it: Health, which chairs it, Interior, Education and Culture, and Social Development. It is honorary, so its members are not paid for that role.
The commission wrote three plans: 2011-2015, 2016-2020 and 2021-2025. The last one is a 33-page PDF with seven objectives, and it does not carry a single money figure.
What it does carry is a chapter titled "Estimate of requirements to strengthen infrastructure and management". There it asks for a technical-administrative secretariat at 20 weekly hours, a statistician at 20, a communications professional at 10, a territorial coordinator at 10, a prevention teacher at 10, trainers at an average of 3 hours and an IT technician at 3 hours of maintenance. Seventy-six weekly hours, for the whole country.
The text adds how they would be obtained: the member ministries will supply them "gradually", or an agreement will be sought with other organisations. Action 5.1 of the strategy itself acknowledges the problem and proposes amending the founding decree "securing sources of income".
In July 2026 the ministry reported that it is evaluating that strategy in order to design the next one, 2026-2030.
| Profile requested | Weekly hours |
|---|---|
| Technical-administrative secretariat with health training | 20 |
| Statistics professional, to process data and reports | 20 |
| Communications professional, for the communication strategy | 10 |
| Operational coordination of territorial decentralisation | 10 |
| Prevention teacher, for awareness and training | 10 |
| Trainers to deliver courses (variable average) | 3 |
| IT technician, web portal maintenance | 3 |
76 weekly hours in total. The table also asks for an IT technician at 30 weekly hours for two months to build the web portal; being temporary, it is not in the sum.
The finding
The national strategy of the country with one of the highest rates on the continent runs on seventy-six weekly hours of part-time profiles, with no assigned funding and no body with a budget of its own.
What does exist
Twenty-two years of decisions, and two lines that work
Absence from the procurement record is not absence of policy. It is that almost none of this policy runs through a purchase: it runs through decrees, ordinances, health-system benefits and salaries.
Decree 378/004 creates the National Honorary Commission for Suicide Prevention, with four ministries and an advisory board from ASSE and the national university.
Law 18,097 declares 17 July the National Suicide Prevention Day. Since then the ministry publishes the previous year's figures on that date.
The first National Suicide Prevention Plan, 2011-2015, is launched with five strategic pillars.
Decree 305/011 adds psychotherapeutic and psychosocial benefits to the health system, including those for people who have attempted suicide and their families. It is not a purchase: it is a mandatory benefit for every provider.
Ordinance 801 creates the register and mandatory notification of suicide attempts. This is the system that produces the attempt figures the ministry publishes each year.
The Mental Health Act 19,529 orders the asylum model replaced by community services. Its closure deadline moved from 2025 to 2029.
Línea Vida starts operating (0800 0767 and *0767), 24-hour crisis care nationwide, run by ASSE. It does not appear in the procurement record: ASSE's own budget pays for it.
The 0800 1920 emotional support line is created during the pandemic by ASSE, the health ministry and Voluntariado Juntos. It runs 24 hours and is free for every health-system user.
The National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2021-2025 is published, with seven objectives and no assigned budget.
The ministry reports it is evaluating the expired strategy to design the next one, 2026-2030, and announces responsible communication as one of its pillars.
The other number
Six thousand one hundred and forty attempts in one year
Notification of a suicide attempt has been mandatory since 2012. That register produces the second figure in the annual report, and it moves in the opposite direction to the first.
In 2025, 6,140 attempts were recorded, made by 5,144 people. The rate of people was 147.56 per 100,000: 205.02 among women and 86.40 among men. Of the total, 3,685 were women and 1,459 men.
The distribution is the exact mirror of mortality. 79% of deaths are men. 72% of attempts are women.
The press reported that attempts rose by 436 cases against 2024. We could not reconstruct that difference: the ministry published an attempt rate of 161.74 per 100,000 for 2024 and 147.56 for 2025, but the two are not computed on the same unit. One counts episodes and the other counts people. Without the raw 2024 counts they cannot be compared.
Method
What we could not verify
- The 2025 rates by department. The ministry presented them at the 17 July 2026 briefing, and the deck it publishes as a PDF is an image with no text layer. The most recent readable departmental rates are those for 2024.
- The raw 2024 suicide-attempt counts. Without them the 436-case rise reported by the press cannot be checked.
- Whether the two identical Montevideo records are one purchase filed twice or two identical purchases on the same day. We publish the conservative total and the other one too.
- Actual spending on suicide prevention. It is not in this record and it is not published anywhere as a budget line: it is spread across ASSE salaries, mandatory health-system benefits and staff hours at four ministries. That it cannot be added up is itself part of the finding.
Tell it where you can be protected
We publish what is in the open data. What isn't — the file, the message, what was said in the meeting — goes to Uruguay Leaks, the anonymous inbox run by la diaria, PODER and DATA Uruguay. The message is written for you: copy it, add what you know and paste it into their form.
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Where to check
All of this is public
The mortality series sits in two ministry PDFs and one MIDES CSV. The seven purchases sit in the state procurement record, each with its identifier. None of this requires a freedom-of-information request.
State documents and international bodies
- MSP — Estrategia Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio 2021-2025 (PDF, serie 1997-2019 y capítulo de requerimientos)
- MSP — Objetivos Sanitarios Nacionales 2030, "Incidencia de suicidio" (PDF, datos 2020 y tablas por edad y departamento)
- MSP — Suicidios en Uruguay: nueva orientación de las políticas públicas (17/07/2025, datos 2024)
- MSP — 17 de julio, Día Nacional de Prevención de Suicidio (17/07/2024, datos 2023 finales)
- MSP — 17 de julio, día nacional para la prevención del suicidio (17/07/2023, datos 2021 y 2022)
- MSP — Quiebre de la tendencia en los datos preliminares sobre el suicidio en 2023 (11/04/2024)
- MIDES — Tasa de mortalidad por suicidios consumados cada 100.000 habitantes, por sexo (CSV, 2000-2019)
- INE — Estimaciones y proyecciones de población, revisión 2025 sobre el Censo 2023
- IMPO — Decreto 378/004, creación de la Comisión Nacional Honoraria de Prevención del Suicidio
- Presidencia — Ley 18.097, Día Nacional de Prevención del Suicidio
- IMPO — Ley 19.529 de Salud Mental (texto vigente)
- OPS — Prevención del suicidio, página temática regional
Press, cited as press
- Subrayado — Hubo 668 muertes por suicidio en 2025 (17/07/2026)
- El Observador — Uruguay registró la menor cantidad de muertes por suicidio en diez años (17/07/2026)
- Ámbito — Bajaron los suicidios, pero la tasa continúa entre las más altas del continente (17/07/2026)
- la diaria — En 2022 aumentó la tasa de suicidios en Uruguay (24/03/2023)
- Naciones Unidas — América, la única región del mundo donde crece el suicidio (10/09/2025)
How to read this investigation
This is an analysis of public procurement data, which is public record. It documents verifiable facts — amounts, dates, suppliers, procurement method — and flags patterns worth scrutiny, keeping proven facts apart from open questions.
An exception purchase, a high price or supplier concentration is not, on its own, proof of wrongdoing. Many contracts may have valid administrative justification. The goal is to enable citizen oversight, not to issue a verdict.
Companies and people are named only as state suppliers, as they appear in the official system. Anyone named may add their response or correct a figure, and it will be incorporated.