There have been a few interesting scientific papers out recently, in particular the updated numbers from the Global Burden of Disease report. The most recent paper, available here www.thelancet.com/global-burden-of-disease is a digest of data from 188 countries for 301 diseases and injuries between 1990 and 2013.

These show some interesting trends of various diseases of relevance to sanitation, in particular it suggests that diarrheal disease is down, intestinal nematodes are down and ascaris infections are down.

It is a long report, so it is a lot to download.

Another report from last December looking at the data says that overall global life expectancy for women is up 7 years to 71 and the WHO says that for women in low income countries it is up 10 years to 64.

This is the other report (also long) www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/articl...4%2961682-2/abstract

And the World Health Organisation health statistics have also been updated for 2015, here: www.who.int/gho/publications/world_health_statistics/en/

If you don't want to wade through all these, I wrote an article on some of the key messages here: www.scidev.net/global/health/news/women-...orer-than-men-s.html