Compare Health Information Across Countries

The Kaiser Family Foundation has created a new Web site to allow visitors to compare health information across countries. The site is called Global Health Facts and is available at GlobalHealthFacts.org. The site seems to be primarily focused on HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, though information is also available on SARS, avian flu, and yellow fever.

The front page has "quick hit" statistics on the number of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis cases worldwide, with additional information available either by topic or by country.

Topics were available in a collapsible outline, grouped by disease. Tuberculosis, for example, had topics that included New TB Cases, TB Deaths, and TB Prevalence rate. Clicking on a topic takes you to a country list that ranks incidence cases. Initially countries are listed alphabetically, you can also rank them by the demographic you're looking at (Djibouti ranks #1 for TB prevalence, etc.) A global count for each demographic is also listed to serve as a benchmark. In addition to the tables, maps are also available for each demographic. Data is downloadable.

Country listings allow you to pick a country from a drop-down menu and get a list of health indicators. Choosing Denmark, for example, provides a page that shows all the health indicators available in tables, except for the malaria ones. Malaria data is only available in countries were malaria is considered endemic; all other countries have those facts listed as NE (Not Endemic). A toggle allows you to show/hide source information for the health data listed; direct links are often available as well.

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