Category Archives: Global health trends

Looking at the COVID-19 statistics on day 3

Posted on March 19, 2020 by colinmathers

I live just a couple of kilometres from the border of Switzerland with France, and last Monday evening the border was closed except for frontaliers (who live across the border from work) and those with urgent reasons.  We are now … Continue reading →

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Declining freedom in the world

Posted on March 10, 2020 by colinmathers

Last week, Freedom House released its 2020 annual report on global freedom. The report documents trends in every region of the world of declining political and civil freedom: “In every region of the world, democracy is under attack by populist … Continue reading →

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Gun ownership and gun deaths

Posted on August 8, 2019 by colinmathers

Given recent events, I took a look at the data relating to gun deaths overall and the  extraordinarily high rates of mass shootings in the USA compared to the rest of the world. Despite President Trump blaming video games and … Continue reading →

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Latest data show accelerating rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide

Posted on June 5, 2019 by colinmathers

Back in January, I posted on climate change (are-humans-heating-up-the-world) and included a graph of the Keeling curve showing the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii has just released its latest results showing that atmospheric … Continue reading →

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State-level trends and levels of child mortality in India 2000-2015

Posted on May 20, 2019 by colinmathers

I’ve been involved for nearly 20 years in the estimation of global, regional and national causes of child death under the age of 5, in collaboration with academic researchers and a number of WHO technical departments (new-estimates-of-the-causes-of-child-death-under-age-5).  This collaboration has … Continue reading →

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WHO and the Global Burden of Disease

Posted on May 7, 2019 by colinmathers

As a former WHO staff member, who played a key role in the production and clearance of WHO health statistics over the last 15 years, and a long-time collaborator with the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) enterprise and with the … Continue reading →

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New estimates of the causes of child death under age 5

Posted on December 9, 2018 by colinmathers

WHO has just released the latest update on global causes of death for children under age 5 for years 2000-2017. These are available for download on the WHO website at  https://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_burden_disease/estimates/en/index2.html and also in the Global Health Observatory at http://www.who.int/gho.  … Continue reading →

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NEW PROJECTIONS OF MORTALITY AND CAUSES OF DEATH TO YEAR 2060

Posted on November 14, 2018 by colinmathers

Back in 2006, I published a paper in PLoS Medicine with detailed projections of deaths by age, sex and cause for all regions of the world, from year 2002 to 2030 (https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0030442).  That paper has proved very popular, with over … Continue reading →

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Are countries on track to meet the global targets for noncommunicable diseases?

Posted on September 21, 2018 by colinmathers

More than half of all countries are predicted to fail to reach the UN target to reduce premature deaths from cancers, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes by 2030, according to a new analysis published by the NCD Countdown … Continue reading →

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Noncommunicable disease mortality in tropical countries

Posted on July 31, 2018 by colinmathers

The recent WHO update of causes of death for 186 countries in 2016 (www.who.int/evidence/bod) has been used as the basis for an assessment of the importance of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in tropical countries. The paper “Acting on non-communicable diseases in … Continue reading →

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