Manual for estimating the economic costs of injuries due to interpersonal and self-directed violence

Downloads & Links resources

• WHO Manual for Estimating Costs of Violence – (Guide/Manual)

Description

The report  highlights the enormous economic burden of interpersonal violence. Two issues of concern were raisedin the development of that report. First, there are few studies examining the economic burden of interpersonal violence in developing countries, where the burden of violence is heaviest. Second, the report found large variations in the methodologies used to cost interpersonal violence, thus limiting comparability across studies.These two issues point to a clear need for rigorous methodological guidelines to cost violence, especially in the context of developing countries. To address this need, World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States decided to prepare this manual, which provides a standardized set of recommendationsto estimate the direct and indirect economic costs of interpersonal and self-directed violence.

On 4 and 5 April 2005, WHO hosted an expert meeting in Geneva to guide the preparation of the manual. Experts from Australia, Jamaica, Mexico, the Netherlands, South Africa, Thailand and the United States, together with WHO staff, participated in the meeting to ensure that the manual would be of global relevance and use. Based on the recommendations of the meeting, WHO and CDC then worked with the Small Arms Survey project at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, in drafting the manual, which has been extensively peer reviewed. Centres in Brazil, Jamaica and Thailand carried out pilot case studies to test the applicability of the recommendations in a variety of contexts.