World Health Statistics 2009 contains WHO's annual compilation of data from its 193 member states, and includes a summary of progress towards the health-related millennium development goals and targets. This edition also contains a new section on reported cases of selected infectious diseases. It provides a comprehensive summary of the current status of national health and health systems including; mortality and burden of disease, causes of death, reported infectious diseases, health service coverage, risk factors, health systems resources, health expenditures, inequities and demographic and socioeconomic statistics. The section on inequities presents statistics on the distribution of selected health outcomes and interventions within countries, disaggregated by sex, age, urban and rural settings, wealth, and educational level. WHO presents World Health Statistics 2009 as an integral part of its ongoing effort to inform better measures of population health and national health systems.

The compendium aims to provide in a single volume a wide range of statistical information on health and health care in the UK and its four constituent countries, including long time series and comparisons with other economically developed nations.

Most accounts of health and healthcare in Africa are written by foreigners. African Health Leaders: Making Change and Claiming the Future redresses the balance. Written by Africans, who have themselves led improvements in their own countries, the book discusses the creativity, innovation and leadership that has been involved tackling everything from HIV/AIDs, to maternal, and child mortality and neglected tropical diseases. It celebrates their achievements and shows how, over three generations, African health leaders are creating a distinctively African vision of health and health systems. The book reveals how African Health Leaders are claiming the future - in Africa, but also by sharing their insights and knowledge globally and contributing fully to improving health throughout the world. It illustrates how African leadership can enable foreign agencies and individuals working in Africa to avoid all those misunderstandings and misinterpretations of culture and context which lead to wasted efforts and frustrated hopes. African Health Leaders challenges Africans to do more for themselves; build on success; tackle weak governance, corrupt systems and low expectations and claim the future. It sets out what Africa needs from the rest of the world in the spirit of global solidarity - not primarily in aid, but through investment, collaboration, partnership and co-development. It concludes with a vision for improvement based on three foundations: an understanding that 'health is made at home'; the determination to offer access to health services for everyone; and an insistence on the pursuit of quality.

Epidemiology of Chronic Disease: Global Perspectives is the most current and authoritative resource on the epidemiology, etiology, pathogenesis, risk factors and preventive factors of over 50 major chronic diseases and conditions. This comprehensive text provides readers with an excellent basis for examining current hypotheses regarding chronic disease epidemiology.

This book provides an overview of the health of developing nations in the early twenty-first century. The basic assumption is that the health of a population is not independent of broader demographic trends, and does follow the health transition model. The coverage is broad, ranging from health transition in developing countries, to the health of women, to an analysis of morbidity. Population health is an essential component of human and social development. As both a means and an end of development, health lies at the heart of underdevelopment, and ranks first on the list of international priorities. The WHO slogan ‘Health for all in 2000’ reflects the spirit of a more general movement in favor of health promotion throughout the world. But the developing world is far from reaching this aim. The health of populations has improved in developing regions but there are still deep inequalities, and serious problems remain, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. After reviewing the core concepts of population health, the book examines health transition in developing countries, a process that has resulted in a double burden of diseases. A discussion of mortality in developing countries serves to highlight the high rates of child mortality in these regions. The book devotes a full chapter to women’s health, and its chapter-length analysis of morbidity highlights the double burden weighing down developing populations and concludes with an analysis of health systems in developing countries.

This work includes 1000 entries covering the spectrum of defining women in the contemporary world.

Evidence-Based Imaging is a user-friendly guide to the evidence-based science and merit defining the appropriate use of medical imaging in both adult and pediatric patients. Chapters are divided into major areas of medical imaging and cover the most prevalent diseases in developed countries, including the four major causes of mortality and morbidity: injury, coronary artery disease, cancer, and cerebrovascular disease. This book gives the reader a clinically-relevant overview of evidence-based imaging, with topics including epidemiology, patient selection, imaging strategies, test performance, cost-effectiveness, radiation safety and applicability. Each chapter is framed around important and provocative clinical questions relevant to the daily physician’s practice. Key points and summarized answers are highlighted so the busy clinician can quickly understand the most important evidence-based imaging data. A wealth of illustrations and summary tables reinforces the key evidence. This revised, softcover edition adds ten new chapters to the material from the original, hardcover edition, covering radiation risk in medical imaging, the economic and regulatory impact of evidence-based imaging in the new healthcare reform environment in the United States, and new topics on common disorders. By offering a clear understanding of the science behind the evidence, Evidence-Based Imaging fills a void for radiologists, family practitioners, pediatricians, surgeons, residents, and others with an interest in medical imaging and a desire to implement an evidence-based approach to optimize quality in patient care.

International health and aid policies of the past two decades have had a major impact on the delivery of care in low and middle-income countries. This book argues that these policies have often failed to achieve their main aims, and have in fact contributed to restricted access to family medicine and hospital care. Presenting detailed evidence, and illustrated by case studies, this book describes how international health policies to date have largely resulted in expensive health care for the rich, and disjointed and ineffective services for the poor. As a result, large segments of the population world-wide continue to suffer from unnecessary casualties, pain and impoverishment. International Health and Aid Policies arms health professionals, researchers and policy makers with strategies that will enable them to bridge the gaps between public health, medicine and health policy in order to support robust, comprehensive and accessible health care systems in any political environment.