Category Archives: World Health Organization
Tenfold increase in childhood and adolescent obesity in four decades
The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according … Continue reading
Monitoring trends in causes of death – India and the Million Death Study
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 include around 15 targets for mortality-related indicators. The “gold” standard method for monitoring mortality and causes of death is a well-functioning civil registration system in which every death certificate has a medically … Continue reading
Global health is improving, so is global health information
Yesterday we released World Health Statistics 2017: Monitoring health for the SDGs. This WHO flagship publication compiles data from the organization’s 194 Member States on 21 health-related SDG targets, providing a snapshot of both gains and threats to the health … Continue reading
University of Sydney Award for contributions to global health
On 27 April, I was awarded the University of Sydney’s President’s Award for my contributions to global health monitoring. I did an Honours Degree in Science majoring in Physics and followed that with a PhD (1979) in theoretical physics. However … Continue reading
More than 1 billion people globally are living with high blood pressure
This finding come from a new study published last Tuesday in The Lancet, which found that the number of people affected by high blood pressure has almost doubled over the past 40 years: lancet.com/high_blood_pressre The study highlighted a stark contrast … Continue reading
Progress in reducing child deaths: updated estimates of causes and trends
Despite remarkable progress in the improvement of child survival between 1990 and 2015, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4 target of a two-thirds reduction of under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) was not achieved globally. A paper published last week examined updated … Continue reading
Major improvements in global life expectancy, Africa is starting to catch up
Today we released World Health Statistics 2016, our annual publication summarizing information on the health of the world’s people . Global average life expectancy increased by 5 years between 2000 and 2015, the fastest increase since the 1960s. Those gains … Continue reading
