Category Archives: World Health Organization

Disease Control Priorities, Edition 3

Posted on December 24, 2017 by colinmathers

The third edition of Disease Control Priorities was launched by the WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom, in London earlier this month. These nine volumes provide up-to-date evidence on priorities that countries should consider in order to reach Universal Health … Continue reading →

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Child mortality continues to decline, but large disparities remain

Posted on October 25, 2017 by colinmathers

The United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN-IGME) released new data last week showing that the world has made substantial progress in reducing child mortality in the last several decades. The total number of child deaths has dropped … Continue reading →

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Tenfold increase in childhood and adolescent obesity in four decades

Posted on October 11, 2017 by colinmathers

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 →

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Monitoring trends in causes of death – India and the Million Death Study

Posted on September 24, 2017 by colinmathers

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 →

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Global health is improving, so is global health information

Posted on May 18, 2017 by colinmathers

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 →

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University of Sydney Award for contributions to global health

Posted on May 16, 2017 by colinmathers

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 →

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More than 1 billion people globally are living with high blood pressure

Posted on November 18, 2016 by colinmathers

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 →

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Progress in reducing child deaths: updated estimates of causes and trends

Posted on November 15, 2016 by colinmathers

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 →

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Major improvements in global life expectancy, Africa is starting to catch up

Posted on May 19, 2016 by colinmathers

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 →

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Did the world achieve the Millenium Development Goals for health?

Posted on May 10, 2016 by colinmathers

In 2015 the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) come to the end of their term, and a post-2015 agenda, comprising 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), takes their place. My Department published a report in December 2015 assessing the achievement of the … Continue reading →

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