Abstract
Egbert Sondorp discusses the public health uses and implications of a new tool, the Dirty War Index, that measures prohibited war outcomes inflicted on populations during conflict.
Highlights
Earlier this year, Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, delivered the 2008 International Health Lecture for the Academy of Medical Sciences in London, a lecture entitled “A factbased world view”
A series of mortality surveys conducted by the International Rescue Committee in the Democratic Republic of the Congo found an excess of almost 4 million deaths between 1998–2004, all attributable to the ongoing conflict [1]
This Perspective discusses the following new article published in PLoS Medicine: Hicks MH-R, Spagat M (2008) The Dirty War Index: A public health and human rights tool for examining and monitoring armed conflict outcomes
Summary
Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, delivered the 2008 International Health Lecture for the Academy of Medical Sciences in London, a lecture entitled “A factbased world view”. Gapminder.org/): animated software that makes a multitude of quantitative datasets visible and meaningful. It was fascinating in his lecture to see health and wealth data from 166 countries move through time, making some important messages visible to a broad audience. Rosling showed the major health improvements over the last couple of decades in most countries in the world, in comparison to a small set of countries where all health development seems to have totally stagnated. This stagnant set of countries consists of most African countries and a number of conflictaffected countries elsewhere, such as Afghanistan. The Perspective section is for experts to discuss the clinical practice or public health implications of a published article that is freely available online
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