In this week’s Special Report we acknowledge the imminent 60^th birthday of the World Health Organisation (WHO). Udani Samarasekera asks health and development experts what they think some of the UN agency’s greatest achievements and failures have been and how they believe the organisation needs to change to better address health globally.

Meanwhile-WHO’s 60th anniversary celebrations have left Africa in the cold. Across the continent countries face high mortality rates and deep misery, and the regional office of the UN’s specialised health organisation-WHO AFRO-has done too little to help. Clare Kapp reports from Cape Town.

We announce a new partnership, between The Lancet and the Seattle-based Institute for Health Metrics. In a joint Comment, we discuss the aims of the partnership, to galvanise the scientific rigour of global health, and in turn we introduce a new section in The Lancet this week: Global Health Monitoring.

Another partnership announcement, in another Comment, between The Lancet and University College London, UK. The aim of this joining up is to form a Commission to monitor and report on the health issues associated with climate change: a major priority for the 21^st centurey.

Changing tack slightly, some important highlights in our research section this week:

Intimate partner violence, a difficult topic to discuss, let alone research. But some striking findings in the WHO multicountry study led by Claudia Garcia-Moreno. More than 25,000 women from a variety of low and middle-income  countries and Japan took part in this study. Women who had ever experienced sexual or physical violence often had serious related health problems such as difficulty walking, dizziness, memory loss, and vaginal discharge. These poor health outcomes often lasted a long time after the violent act or acts were committed.

Authors of the article and accompanying Comment call for a much better understanding and research agenda in this field to make physical and sexual violence against women a greater public-health priority

Encouraging signs that a vaccine against rotavirus-which causes severe gastrointestinal disease common to developing countries-could be effective for up to 2 years when given to infants in the first two years of life.

Also in research the controversial area of screening for neuroblastoma: Japanese research suggests that widespread screening in japan over the past two decades has reduced neuroblastoma mortality; although a linked Comment urges caution as one problem with screening is that it detects the kind of neuroblastoma in infants that often disappears by itself and does not therefore require intervention.

And finally, this week’s Seminar takes a close look at premenstrual syndrome.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 4:47 pm and is filed under The Lancet Digest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.