Commenting overall on the World Health Report they conclude: "Public-health surveillance on this scale is a new, and immature, science. Production of such a report is evidence of ambition, energy, and determination. It will have required orchestrating the activities of many expert groups and marshalling and standardising enormous quantities of data. This exercise is more comprehensive, more informative, and more theoretically coherent than its predecessor (based on estimates for 1990), but should still be regarded as a report of work in progress. That past conjectures of this kind have been shown to be open to challenge and to subsequent refinement argues in favour of their continued iteration. It is to the credit of WHO that it hosts this ongoing work."

Press Conference: Christopher Murray and WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland will present WHO's World Report 2002 at a press conference being held at the Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, Regents Park, London NW1, at 1030 H Wednesday 30 October.

Further information available from Juliet Heller, c/o Hoffman and Hoffman Public Relations; T) 44-20-8531-1055; E) julieth@panoslondon.org.uk or juliet.heller@ntlworld.com

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Contact: Richard Lane
richard.lane@lancet.com
44-0-207-424-4949
Lancet
30-Oct-2002