Publications

Drowning is a leading cause of death among children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in Asia, but current data greatly underestimate mortality due to drowning. This is due to the way drowning data is collected, classified and reported as well as the difficulty in correcting and adjusting the data. The sum of all the biases and uncertainties has masked the fact that drowning is a leading cause of child death in LMICs in Asia. Cost-effective, affordable and sustainable interventions appropriate for LMICs are available to address this newly recognized and significant killer of children. Large numbers of these deaths could be prevented annually if these drowning interventions were included in current country programmes. When implemented at national scale and as an integral part of country programmes, the prevention of these drowning deaths, which mostly occur in early childhood, would result in a rapid decrease in early childhood mortality.

In every single industrialized country, injury has now become the leading killer of children between the ages of 1 and 14. Taken together, traffic accidents, intentional injuries, drownings, falls, fires, poisonings and other accidents kill more than 20,000 children every year throughout the OECD. Despite these statistics, and the rising worries of parents everywhere, the likelihood of a child dying from intentional or unintentional injury is small and becoming smaller. For a child born into the developed world today, the chances of death by injury before the age of 15 are approximately 1 in 750 - less than half the level of 30 years ago. The likelihood of death from abuse or intentional harm is smaller still - less than 1 in 5,000. On the roads of the industrialized world, child deaths have been declining steadily for more than two decades.

Amartya Sen, the Nobel economist, explains why mortality should, or could, be an indicator of economic success. While mortality is not in itself an economic phenomenon, the influences that increase or reduce mortality often have distinctly economic causes. Consequently there is a prima facie reason for not dismissing mortality as a test of economic performance. He argues that mortality information can throw light on the nature of social inequalities, including gender bias and racial disparities; biases in economic arrangements are often most clearly seen through differential mortality information. He advises that we look beyond the standard statistics of incomes and earnings into the real information on deprivation and hardship.

An alarming drop in population numbers has been observed in many of the transitional countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Bloc since the collapse of communism in the region. This paper documents the extent and causes of the crisis. The author finds wanting the currently fashionable explanation - that the observed trends are merely apparent; a phantom risen from the wreckage of the communist propaganda machine. But neither can traditional demographic modelling techniques adequately interpret the dramatic changes being felt in the region. The message is clear. These issues are due a revised approach, for only through a better understanding of the problem can the right solutions be found.

From January 1992 to the first half of 1994 the death rate in Russia rose by over 30 per cent, a rise of a magnitude never before seen in an industrialized country without a war or famine. In 1993 alone the life expectancy of a Russian man fell from 62 to 59. This paper examines the nature and causes of this unprecedented and disastrous increase.