Saloni Dattani worked with us from 2021 to 2025 as a writer and project lead, focusing on health. She has a Ph.D. in psychiatric genetics from the University of Hong Kong and King’s College London.
Saloni Dattani worked with us from 2021 to 2025 as a writer and project lead, focusing on health. She has a Ph.D. in psychiatric genetics from the University of Hong Kong and King’s College London.
Topics covered by Saloni on Our World in Data
May 19, 2025
Measles once killed millions every year. Vaccines changed this, preventing disease, long-term immune damage, and deadly outbreaks.
December 7, 2023
Pandemics have killed millions of people throughout history. How many deaths were caused by different pandemics, and how have researchers estimated their death tolls?
December 23, 2024
Many antibiotics were developed during the “Golden Age of Antibiotics”. How did it happen, why has antibiotic development slowed down since then, and what can we do to reignite it?
August 4, 2025
Over a century of progress in surgery, drugs, prevention, and emergency response has driven down death rates from heart disease and stroke.
July 21, 2025
Cuts to US aid could end the Demographic and Health Surveys. This would leave a massive gap in our understanding of global health, mortality, and development.
June 16, 2025
Measles causes more than an acute illness: it suppresses immune memory and increases the risk of complications for years.
June 9, 2025
Before the 1970s, most children affected by leukemia would quickly die from it. Now, most children in rich countries are cured.
April 21, 2025
Data from large meta-analyses show that measles vaccination is highly effective and safe, reducing the chances of getting measles by 95%.
February 24, 2025
The baby boom reshaped family life and drove population growth in many countries. In this article, we explore the key patterns in seven charts.
February 24, 2025
The total fertility rate is commonly confused with the eventual number of births per woman. This can result in misinterpreting the impact of policies and trends over time.
December 23, 2024
To use antibiotics more effectively, it’s important to know how different antibiotics work and how antibiotic resistance evolves and spreads.
November 18, 2024
The pandemic has resulted in over twenty million deaths. In this article, we review the key insights from global data on COVID-19.
November 18, 2024
Our small team made COVID-19 data clear, reliable, and accessible to a global audience. This is how it happened.
November 15, 2024
We list our datasets on COVID-19 and the frequency with which we will update them going forward.
November 4, 2024
HPV vaccines offer a rare opportunity to effectively eliminate one type of cancer. By taking this opportunity, it’s possible to save hundreds of thousands of women each year.
August 26, 2024
Scientists have developed effective and safer antipsychotic medications, but much improvement is still needed.
August 5, 2024
To better monitor and prevent suicides globally, it's crucial to understand how they are measured and estimated by different sources.
June 17, 2024
The world has seen a large decline in trachoma, but millions are still at risk. How can we make more progress against it?
May 27, 2024
To reach the goal of polio eradication, we can use new vaccines to contain outbreaks and improve testing, outbreak responses, and sanitation.
May 13, 2024
Maternal mortality rates appear to have risen in the last 20 years in the US. But this reflects a change in measurement rather than an actual rise in mortality.
May 1, 2024
Our peer-reviewed article outlines seven ways to publish data better.
December 14, 2023
Cardiovascular diseases are a range of related health conditions that develop in the heart and blood vessels. What are the different diseases, and what is their impact worldwide?
November 27, 2023
What do the terms “period” and “cohort” mean in statistics? How do they differ, and why does it matter?
November 27, 2023
Women tend to live longer than men in all countries — but the sex gap in life expectancy is not a constant.
October 13, 2023
Death rates decline rapidly after birth but rise again in adolescence. From adulthood onwards, they rise exponentially.
October 9, 2023
Neonates, infants, children: what age ranges do these terms refer to?
August 9, 2023
Risk factors are important to understand because they can help us identify how to save lives. How do researchers estimate their impact?
August 9, 2023
In many countries, when people die, the cause of their death is officially registered in their country’s national system. How is this determined?
August 9, 2023
The effects of risk factors can be calculated in different ways. How are they calculated and interpreted?
August 9, 2023
Deaths caused by each risk factor can’t be added up. By understanding why, we will have a better understanding of how many lives can be saved with each intervention.
May 26, 2023
Global data on mental health is essential to understand the scale and patterns of these illnesses, and how to reduce them. How do researchers collect this data, and how reliable is it?
May 26, 2023
Mental illnesses are a range of conditions that significantly affect people’s lives. What are their symptoms?
October 20, 2022
The risk of death from influenza has declined over time, but globally, hundreds of thousands of people still die from the disease each year.
July 7, 2022
In the late 1980s, there were near a million new cases of guinea worm disease recorded worldwide. In 2021, there were only 15. How was this achieved?
June 9, 2022
The world is close to eradicating polio, but has been set back in the last few years. To achieve the goal of global eradication, it's crucial to improve testing.
May 18, 2022
Depression is one of the world’s most common health conditions. It's estimated that one-in-three women and one-in-five men have an episode of major depression by the age of 65.
April 20, 2022
Only a fraction of all polio cases are reported. Here we apply a method by Tebbens et al. (2010) to estimate the actual number of global polio cases.
April 7, 2022
People are being diagnosed with depression at an earlier age than in the past because of increased openness to mental health disorders and improved diagnostic guidelines.
February 10, 2022
Randomized controlled trials are a key tool to study cause and effect. Why do they matter and how do they work?
September 1, 2021
Our understanding of depression has evolved over time, with wider screening for depression, new questionnaires, and better statistical tools.
December 16, 2020
November 1, 2020
May 22, 2020
May 7, 2020
May 5, 2020
May 2, 2020
May 1, 2020
Help us do this work by making a donation.
