Every day more than 2000 children and teenagers die from an injury which could have been prevented. This joint WHO / UNICEF report is a plea to keep kids safe by promoting evidence-based injury prevention interventions and sustained investment by all sectors. The report presents the current knowledge about the five most important causes of unintentional injury – road traffic injuries, drowning, burns, falls and poisoning – and makes seven recommendations for action.

Download the child friendly version of the report here

Katherine Floyd, Mehran Hosseini and Catherine Watt coordinated the production of this report. The report was written by Christopher Dye, Katherine Floyd and Mukund Uplekar. Ana Bierrenbach, Karin Bergström, Léopold Blanc, Malgorzata Grzemska, Christian Gunneberg, Knut Lönnroth, Paul Nunn, Andrea Pantoja, Mario Raviglione, Suzanne Scheele, Karin Weyer and Matteo Zignol provided input to and careful review of particular sections of text.

Christopher Dye, Mehran Hosseini, Andrea Pantoja and Catherine Watt prepared the fi gures and tables that appear in Chapters 1-3, with support from Katherine Floyd, Christian Gunneberg, Suzanne Scheele and Matteo Zignol. The epidemiological and financial profi les that appear in Annex 1 were prepared by Suzanne Scheele and Andrea Pantoja, respectively. Monica Yesudian drafted the strategy component of the country profi les that appear in Annex 1 and coordinated their initial review. Catherine Watt produced the final version of the profiles, including coordination of their final review by countries. Mehran Hosseini prepared Annex 3 and Ana Bierrenbach prepared Annex 4. Compilation and follow up of data were conducted by Rachel Bauquerez, Ana Bierrenbach, Christian Gunneberg, Mehran Hosseini (who led the process), Andrea Pantoja, Abigail Wright, Monica Yesudian and Matteo Zignol.

Safer water for better health -- the first-ever report depicting country-by-country estimates of the burden of disease due to water, sanitation and hygiene highlights how much disease could be prevented through increased access to safe water and better hygiene.

This comprehensive overview provides the epidemiological evidence and economic arguments for fully integrating water, sanitation and hygiene in countries' disease reduction strategies -- a pre-requisite to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. It also provides the basis for preventive action by all relevant sectors managing critical water resources and services in support of public health efforts.

Lack of safe water, sanitation and hygiene remains one of the world’s most urgent health issues.

World Health Statistics 2008 presents the most recent available health statistics for WHO’s 193 Member States. This fourth edition includes 10 highlights of health statistics as well as data on an expanded set of over 70 key health indicators. The indicators were selected on the basis of their relevance to global health monitoring and considerations of data availability, accuracy and comparability among Member States.

This publication is in two parts. Part 1 presents 10 topical highlights based on recent publications or results of new analyses of existing data. Part 2 presents key health indicators in the form of six tables for all WHO Member States: mortality and burden of disease; health service coverage; risk factors; health systems resources; inequities in health care coverage and health outcome; and basic demographic and socioeconomic statistics. This edition includes, for the fi rst time, data on trends where the statistics are available and of acceptable quality.

World Health Statistics 2008 has been collated from publications and databases produced by WHO’s technical programmes and regional offices, as well as from publicly accessible databases. The data on inequalities in health care coverage and health outcome are primarily derived from analyses of household surveys and are available only for a limited number of countries. It is anticipated that the number of countries reporting disaggregated data will increase during the next few years. Nevertheless, even in their current limited form, the data will be useful for the global public health community. In estimating country indicators based on different data sources, regional offi ces and technical programmes apply peer-reviewed methods and consult with experts around the world. To maximize the accessibility, accuracy, comparability and transparency of health statistics, the technical programmes and regional offi ces also work closely with Member States through an interactive process of data collection, compilation, quality assessment and estimation.

All statistics presented in this publication have, unless otherwise stated, been cleared as WHO’s official figures in consultation with Member States. Nevertheless, the estimates published here should still be regarded as best estimates made by WHO rather than the offi cial statistics of Member States, which may use alternative rigorous procedures.

More detailed information, including a compendium of statistics and an online version of this publication, is a vailable data become available. The web site, which has now been revised with new features and a new look to better meet users’ needs, will allow data to be displayed in different formats such as tables, maps and graphs. It also provides, wherever possible, metadata describing the sources of data, estimation methods and quality a ssessment. Careful scrutiny and use of the statistics presented in this report should contribute to progressively better measurement of relevant indicators of population health and health systems. From WHO’s Statistical Information System (http://www.who.int/statistics). This will be regularly updated as new data become available. The web site, which has now been revised with new features and a new look to better meet users’ needs, will allow data to be displayed in different formats such as tables, maps and graphs. It also provides, wherever possible, metadata describing the sources of data, estimation methods and quality a ssessment. Careful scrutiny and use of the statistics presented in this report should contribute to progressively better m easurement of relevant indicators of population health and health systems.

This landmark new report presents the first comprehensive worldwide analysis of tobacco use and control efforts. It provides countries with a roadmap to reverse the devastating global tobacco epidemic that could kill up to one billion people by the end of this century.

The report outlines the MPOWER package, a set of six key tobacco control measures that reflect and build on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

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