BioMed Central Blog
Accurate mortality statistics are fundamental to help guide priorities in public health policy, planning, and resource allocation. Reliable information on levels of mortality and leading causes of death enables decision-makers to strategically design, fund, and implement programs to ensure the greatest possible impact on longevity and quality of life.
The thematic series, “Measuring mortality in Thailand”, published by Population Health Metrics, describes methods and results from what may be the largest-ever national investigation into the validity and quality of cause-of-death statistics in a developing country, using extensive field studies in Thailand to develop reliable estimates of mortality by age, sex, and cause. A commentary by Peter Byass discusses the four research papers by Rao and colleagues and considers methodological assessments and public health implications. The research papers relate to a detailed investigation of cause-specific mortality in Thailand during 2005, integrating a number of different data sources, including empirical investigations, death certification, and the use of verbal autopsy methods.
The research published in this thematic series could serve as a model for additional investigations into the quality of mortality statistics in other developing countries. The series Editor, Dr. Emmanuela Gakidou, is an Associate Editor for Population Health Metrics.
Population Health Metrics is ready to receive manuscripts on all aspects of the measurement of health at the population level.
Posted by Blog Maintenance at 11:58 Comments (0)
Marking 30 years of critical care medicine
The International Symposium on Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (ISICEM) is celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2010, and to acknowledge this milestone Critical Care has published a related viewpoint article by Editor-in-Chief Professor Jean-Louis Vincent, ISICEM chairman.
This article, co-written by several members of Critical Care’s Editorial Board, is an account of the last 30 years in the field of critical and intensive care medicine. As well as discussing the advances made in specific areas such as sepsis, respiratory failure and cardiovascular disease, the authors are very honest in disclosing that, overall, there have been few major developments in new therapies for intensive care patients. Despite this, notable advances in the process of care and thus patient outcomes are also described.
Looking ahead to the next 30 years the authors speculate that improved communication between research scientists and ICU physicians, better models to test the effect of complex interventions, and improvements to critical care in developing nations will be seen. We congratulate the organisers of ISICEM on this anniversary, and look forward to reporting on the next exciting developments in the field.
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Posted by Surayya Johar at 09:44 Comments (0)