Citation

Rezaeian M. Epidemiology 2015; 26(1): e10-11.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/EDE.0000000000000209

PMID

25437320

Abstract

Wars and armed conflicts are the oldest social maladies that affect human beings. "War" refers to clashes between states that last for a long time and cause substantial damage; in contrast, "armed conflicts" encompass clashes between 2 groups with less damage.1 Estimates are that, just in the 20th century, war-related injuries have caused 191 million deaths, almost half of them civilians.2

Evidence suggests that these oldest social sicknesses have not been properly investigated in terms of their epidemiologic patterns, compared with other public health problems. For example, I have recently reported that, based on papers indexed in PubMed, for the epidemiology of severe acute respiratory syndrome, there are nearly 2.5 articles per death (774 deaths in total), while for the epidemiology of wars and armed conflict there are only 0.00005 articles per death in the 20th century.3 Therefore, I submit that "War Epidemiology" is an important branch of epidemiology that we should take more seriously, as an independent subdivision of "Field Epidemiology."4 This new branch of epidemiology is needed urgently because of the increasing number of wars and armed conflicts, especially during recent decades. The majority of these incidents are happening within developing countries, mostly located in the Middle East and Africa--despite the fact that most military expenditure comes from developed countries, especially the United States...

Language: en

Keywords

Developing Countries; Epidemiology; Humans; Mortality; Research; Warfare