Publications

There is considerable value in exploring whether and how a limited set of common health metrics, such as the ones presented in this supplement, can produce valid and reliable estimates of impact for global health and family planning.

The impetus and opportunities for improving birth, death, and cause of death data have never been more propitious. Renewed country commitment to strengthen civil registration systems is clearly evident, supported by nascent regional coalitions of technical and development organisations.

Many African countries have extremely low ratios of physicians to population, and there are very, very few specialists. This leaves most patients without access to specialised care, and importantly also leaves many countries with insufficient expertise to properly evaluate the burden of illness and the needs of the population overall.

The current global TB epidemic can and should be viewed as a basic human rights and ethical issue: millions of people around the world are being either undertreated or overtreated for a curable illness, leaving them vulnerable to long-lasting and avoidable health, economic, and social consequences.

Public health was born from crises. Before the influenza pandemic of 1918, many diseases were seen as something that mostly affected the poor, to be blamed on those who had not pulled themselves out of poverty.

The ability to reliably evaluate the impact of interventions and changes in hypertension prevalence and control is critical if the burden of hypertension-related disease is to be reduced.

Of all adult primary care interventions, improvement in the management of hypertension treatment can save the most lives and can also reduce spending on the management of patients with heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, and other preventable complications of uncontrolled hypertension.

Large-scale epidemics and pandemics pose a serious threat, not only to global health security but also to countries, communities and individuals in their efforts to achieve resilience. The threat of emerging infectious diseases, including those of zoonotic origin, and the increasing prevalence of diseases previously controlled by antimicrobials and vaccination efforts, is a cause for concern to the global health community. Communities play an important role in prevention, early detection and early response regarding this threat.

Providing a clear link between the epidemic evolution in time, place and person allows specific targeting of interventions to support prevention, reduction and eradication of transmission to at risk groups. The combination of the improved utilization of social science to inform programming, needs to be a two-way dialogue, where epidemiological data is used to target and tailor SBC.