Brazil has the third highest homicide rate and is within the top five nations for traffic-related deaths. This article examines injury mortality and morbidity data for 1 year by age, sex and injury type. Brazil’s raw injury rate for the entire population was 71.5/100 000, climbing to a rate of 180.7/100 000 among those aged ⩾75 years. Unintentional and intentional deaths were almost equal in proportion. For each death, almost six people were treated for an injury at a public hospital (no data are available for private hospitals). Among hospitalized injuries, falls comprised 42.6% of cases. The hospital mortality rate was almost twice as high among patients with intentional injury as among those with unintentional injuries. The data precede two 2004 campaigns to reduce firearms in Brazil. Gawryszewski VP, Rodrigues EMS. The burden of injury in Brazil, 2003.

A brief article advocates a binational trauma registry in Australia and New Zealand to benchmark the management of injured patients. Currently, there are no trauma registries in two Australian territories, and they operate within hospitals in only two locations in New Zealand. These limitations prohibit comparisons …