Photo Courtesy of http://www.christianwolff.com/Evidence_Based_Treatment.html

By: Eteena Tadjiogueu

There’s a sea of numbers and figures to sift through when trying to measure impact and need in the global health arena. If you dare, you can try to figure out a nation’s disease burden for a specific infection, the rate of mortality and/or morbidity, population size, resources and infrastructure, etc. If you can find what you’re looking for, there still remains a need to connect the dots between the various data, and often times, various sources.

The theme of the 2010 Global Health Council conference—which begins today in Washington, DC—is “Global Health: Goals & Metrics.” The conference is calling attention to a great need and opportunity for global health practitioners to collect and distribute accurate and informative figures that will impact funding for NGOs, and research and development of medications and vaccines if the need exists (which, of course, it does).

So where should you look if you’re interested in learning more about a specific global health problem? For starters, all things NTDs are found on the Global Network for Neglected Tropical Diseases’ site, in particular the interactive map holds a wealth of information on NTDs and stories from the field. If you don’t have access to an academic research system like LexisNexis, then you should check out the Public Library of Science which is an open-access (ie. free) scholarly journal that frequently features editorials from the Sabin Vaccine Institute’s President, Dr. Peter Hotez, as well as other notable scientists and researchers. Sabin.org has information on NTDs and diseases like rotavirus, HPV, and pneumococcal disease. When I’m looking for vaccine specific data I sift through the country data from the GAVI Alliance and the World Health Organization.

One of the Pneumococcal Awareness Council of Experts’ members, Hans Rosling, has created one of the most well known and visually appealing statistic aggregators. If you haven’t heard of Gapminder then I encourage you to take a look. Here you’ll find a list of indicators which come to life when you click play. Gapminder doesn’t currently have any information on NTDs, which is unfortunate, but their a step ahead of most in recognizing the great need for global health and development data and for making their “graphs” free and easy to understand.

What are some of your favorite sources for global health statistics and data?