Category Archives: World Health Organization

Ending preventable child deaths by 2030

Posted on October 3, 2014 by colinmathers

Trend data for causes of child death are crucial to inform priorities for improving child survival by and beyond 2015. With academic collaborators at Johns Hopkins University, London School of Hygiene and Tropical medicine and Edinburgh University, we have just … Continue reading →

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Global patterns of violence against children

Posted on September 18, 2014 by colinmathers

The recently released UNICEF report on violence against children used our estimates of child homicide rates for year 2012 from the WHO Global Health Observatory. Of course, these estimates are uncertain for countries without good death registration data. We also … Continue reading →

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Preventing suicide: A global imperative

Posted on September 4, 2014 by colinmathers

More than 800 000 people die by suicide every year, according to WHO’s first global report on suicide prevention, published today. Some 75% of suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries. Globally, suicide rates are highest in people aged 70 … Continue reading →

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The decline of war as a cause of human mortality

Posted on August 17, 2014 by colinmathers

With recent events in Iraq, Syria, Gaza and parts of Africa, and shortly after the century in which millions were killed Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, Steven Pinker’s claim that the human impact of war and conflict has been diminishing may … Continue reading →

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The long-term decline of violence and global homicide rates

Posted on August 14, 2014 by colinmathers

I have just finished reading Steven Pinker’s book “ The Better Angels of our Nature: why violence has declined”. This very large book (802 pages) is an ambitious and serious attempt to show that violence in all its forms (nonfatal, … Continue reading →

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How does the life expectancy of Australian men compare to others?

Posted on June 9, 2014 by colinmathers

I was asked by a journalist last week for statistics on trends in life expectancy of Australian men, and in particular, where Australia ranked in the world. So I pulled out our latest life expectancy estimates, published a couple of … Continue reading →

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Newborn survival: progress but still too many preventable deaths

Posted on June 2, 2014 by colinmathers

Every year, 2·9 million newborn babies die from largely preventable causes, and 2·6 million more are stillborn. The recent Lancet Every Newborn Series paints the clearest picture to date of a newborn’s chance of survival and the steps that must … Continue reading →

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Peak productivity?

Posted on May 25, 2014 by colinmathers

Its been a crazy couple of weeks leading up to the 2014 World Health Assembly (just ended). We were involved in the launch of four global reports with a substantial statistical input from us in a period of 8 days. … Continue reading →

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Maternal mortality rates rising in the USA

Posted on May 13, 2014 by colinmathers

We released new estimates for maternal mortality rates last week. See post at https://colinmathers.com/2014/05/06/latest-estimates-for-global-maternal-mortality-show-accelerating-progress/ The big story is that faster progress is needed and most countries will not achieve the Millenium Development Goal for a 75% reduction between 1990 and … Continue reading →

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Latest estimates for global maternal mortality show accelerating progress

Posted on May 6, 2014 by colinmathers

I was just down at the Palais de Nations for a press conference to release our latest estimates of maternal mortality progress. A collaborative effort with other UN Agencies and academic groups that has taken quite a lot of time … Continue reading →

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