World Health Organization

The global health expenditure database that WHO has maintained for the past ten years, provides internationally comparable numbers on national health expenditures. WHO updates the data annually, taking, adjusting and estimating the numbers based on publicly available reports (national health account reports, reports from the Ministry of Finance, Central Bank, National Statistics Offices, public expenditure information and reports from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, etc). The estimates are sent out to the Ministries of Health for validation prior to publication but users are advised that country data may still differ in terms of definitions, data collection methods, population coverage and estimation methods used This database is the source for the health expenditure tables in the World Health Statistics Report and the WHO Global Health Observatory.

The GHO data provides access to indicators on priority health topics including mortality and burden of diseases, the Millennium Development Goals (child nutrition, child health, maternal and reproductive health, immunization, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected diseases, water and sanitation), non communicable diseases and risk factors, epidemic-prone diseases, health systems, environmental health, violence and injuries, equity among others

National Health Accounts (NHA) provides evidence to monitor trends in health spending for all sectors- public and private, different health care activities, providers, diseases, population groups and regions in a country. It helps in developing nationals

Body mass index (BMI) is a simple index of weight-for-height that is commonly used to classify overweight and obesity in adults. It is defined as a person's weight in kilograms divided by the square of his height in meters (kg/m2). The WHO definition is: a BMI greater than or equal to 25 is overweight a BMI greater than or equal to 30 is obesity. BMI provides the most useful population-level measure of overweight and obesity as it is the same for both sexes and for all ages of adults. However, it should be considered a rough guide because it may not correspond to the same degree of fatness in different individuals.

Includes datasets on communicable diseases, human resources for health, noncommunicable diseases and world health statistics.