ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2008
Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia: analysis of data from the world health survey programme.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 30 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Civil society and perilous medicine in Africa: a systematic review.BMJ global health · 2025Pooled it
- Estimating the Number of Civilian Casualties in Modern Armed Conflicts-A Systematic Review.Frontiers in public health · 2021Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Autobiographical Memory and Mental Health Research on Refugees and Asylum Seekers.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- Estimating Adult and Old Age Mortality From Parental Survival Histories Collected Over the Phone: A Validation Study From Bangladesh.Tropical medicine & international health : TM & IH · 2026Article
- A predictive, multi-source, attack-level model to quantify and characterize the injury burden and need for reconstructive surgery in Gaza.EClinicalMedicine · 2026Article
- Accounting for uncertainty in conflict mortality estimation: an application to the Gaza War in 2023-2024.Population health metrics · 2025Article
- A new method for estimating recent adult mortality from summary sibling histories.Population health metrics · 2024Article
- A modified chain-based sponge dressing controls junctional hemorrhage in the tactical combat casualty care simulation of pigs.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2023Article
- Estimating conflict losses and reporting biases.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Racialization, colonialism, and imperialism: a critical autoethnography on the intersection of forced displacement and race in a settler colonial context.Frontiers in sociology · 2023Article
- Global and National Declines in Life Expectancy: An End-of-2021 Assessment.Population and development review · 2022Article
- Regional Effects of Maternal Mortality Determinants in Africa and the Middle East: How About Political Risks of Conflicts?Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Burden of injury along the development spectrum: associations between the Socio-demographic Index and disability-adjusted life year estimates from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017.Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention · 2020Article
- Indirect impact of violent events on emergency department utilization and disease patterns.BMC emergency medicine · 2020Article
- Brain Injury and Dementia in Pakistan: Current Perspectives.Frontiers in neurology · 2020Review
- Sex Differences in Quality of Life and Health Services Utilization among Elderly People in Rural Vietnam.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2018Article
- Adult mortality in sub-Saharan Africa using 2001-2009 census data: does estimation method matter?Genus · 2018Article
- Fatalities from Firearm-Related Injuries in Selected Governorates of Iraq, 2010-2013.Prehospital and disaster medicine · 2017Article
- The impact of out-of-pocket payments for dental care on household finances in low and middle income countries.BMC public health · 2017Article
- The global burden of injury: incidence, mortality, disability-adjusted life years and time trends from the Global Burden of Disease study 2013.Injury prevention : journal of the International Society for Child and Adolescent Injury Prevention · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
- Commented on by
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo provide an accurate estimate of violent war deaths.
designAnalysis of survey data on mortality, adjusted for sampling bias and censoring, from nationally representative surveys designed to measure population health. Estimated deaths compared with estimates in database of passive reports.
setting2002-3 World health surveys, in which information was collected from one respondent per household about sibling deaths, including whether such deaths resulted from war injuries.
main outcome measureEstimated deaths from war injuries in 13 countries over 50 years.
resultsFrom 1955 to 2002, data from the surveys indicated an estimated 5.4 million violent war deaths (95% confidence interval 3.0 to 8.7 million) in 13 countries, ranging from 7000 in the Republic of Congo [corrected] to 3.8 million in Vietnam. From 1995 to 2002 survey data indicate 36,000 war deaths annually (16,000 to 71,000) in the 13 countries studied. Data from passive surveillance, however, indicated a figure of only a third of this. On the basis of the relation between world health survey data and passive reports, we estimate 378,000 globalwar deaths annually from 1985-94, the last years for which complete passive surveillance data were available.
conclusionsThe use of data on sibling history from peacetime population surveys can retrospectively estimate mortality from war. War causes more deaths than previously estimated, and there is no evidence to support a recent decline in war deaths.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.