Web-based tool charts disease, risk factors around the world

Technology steps up to the plate to, once again, help us all...

"Interactive graphics showing how causes of death and disability, and risk factors for disease, differ between countries and change over time were unveiled Tuesday.

The information is from the massive Global Burden of Disease project produced by 488 researchers and 303 institutions in 50 countries. It provides health profiles of 187 countries and allows the user to compare a nation to its geographic, economic or cultural neighbors.

The screens are interactive. Users can key in 291 diseases and 67 risk factors and see how prevalence has changed since 1990.

The graphs and lists are likely to function as a report card for policymakers, a hypothesis-generator for epidemiologists and an alternative to solitaire for global health wonks. The data are used in a study appearing in the Lancet this week that compares Britain’s health with that of 15 other European countries over 20 years."

Comments

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives? In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t...

Palestinian children in irons. UK to investigate

Not for the first time does MPS wonder what sort of country it is when Israel so flagrently allows what can only be described as barbaric and inhuman behaviour to be undertaken by, amongst others, its IDF. No one has seemingly challenged Israel's actions. However, perhaps it's gone a bridge too far - as The Independent reports. The Foreign Office revealed last night that it would be challenging the Israelis over their treatment of Palestinian children after a report by a delegation of senior British lawyers revealed unconscionable practices, such as hooding and the use of leg irons. In the first investigation of its kind, a team of nine senior legal figures examined how Palestinians as young as 12 were treated when arrested. Their shocking report Children in Military Custody details claims that youngsters are dragged from their beds in the middle of the night, have their wrists bound behind their backs, and are blindfolded and made to kneel or lie face down in military vehi...

Mahler's Prodigal Son

Search This Blog