Research shows deaths due to violence such as homicide and sexual assault are rising much more steeply in the eastern Mediterranean region than elsewhere.
Violent acts including suicide, homicide and sexual assaults are increasing faster in the eastern Mediterranean region than in any other in the world, adding to the suffering of populations experiencing conflict and war.
According to a huge body of work from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, deaths due to self-harm increased by 100% to 30,000 in the past 25 years in the region, and those from interpersonal violence were up 152% to 35,000.
In other parts of the world during the same period, the number of deaths from suicide increased 19% and interpersonal violence by 12%.
“Intractable and endemic violence is creating a lost generation of children and young adults,” said Dr Ali Mokdad, lead author of the study (pdf), director for Middle Eastern Initiatives at the IHME, and professor of Global Health. “The future of the Middle East is grim unless we can find a way to bring stability to the region.”
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Read the press release here, and read the complete set of publications here.
About the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)
Established in 2007, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent research center within UW Medicine and one of the Department of Global Health's key partners. IHME provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world’s most important health problems and evaluates strategies to address them. IHME makes this information available so that policymakers, donors, practitioners, researchers, and local and global decision-makers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to improve population health. For more information, visit www.healthdata.org.