Also published this week, is the May Editorial in which the PLoS Medicine editors ask whether journal publishing is an efficient enough mechanism for information sharing in the wake of the SARS epidemic and the H1N1 pandemic as well as a Research in Translation piece that discusses the epidemiology and care of adolescents undertaking nonsuicidal self-injury, also called “deliberate self-harm.”

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Also published this week, is a PLoS Medicine Debate that examines the different approaches that can be taken to tackle neglected tropical diseases (NTDs). Some commentators, such as Jerry Spiegel and colleagues from the University of British Columbia, feel there has been too much focus on the biomedical mechanisms and drug development for NTDs, at the expense of attention to the social determinants of disease. Burton Singer argues that this approach represents another example of the inappropriate “overmedicalization” of contemporary tropical disease control. Peter Hotez and colleagues, in contrast, argue that the best return on investment will continue to be mass drug administration for NTDs.

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Also published this week, two Perspectives that conclude the PLoS Medicine series on Global Health Diplomacy: The first provides a perspective from the United States Department of State on current complexities and challenges in global health diplomacy and the second provides an international diplomatic perspective, describing how foreign policy can make a difference to global health challenges and focusing on the work of the WHO and the UN General Assembly.

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Also published this week, is a Policy Forum – from PLoS Medicine’s series on Global Health Diplomacy – that provides a case study of the difficult negotiations to increase equitable access to vaccines for highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) and pandemic 2009 influenza A (H1N1).

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Also published this week, is a Policy Forum – from PLoS Medicine’s series on Global Health Diplomacy – that provides a case study of China’s growing engagement in global health diplomacy following the SARS epidemic.

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Also this week, PLoS Medicine launches a series on Global Health Diplomacy with a Policy Forum that considers the important interplay between foreign policy and global health interests, and introduces the series, and a second Policy Forum that provides a case study of Brazil’s growing influence in international relations and global health, using as an example the country’s role and use of soft power in the negotiation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

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The first paper evaluates the performance of a set of demographic methods estimating the fraction of deaths registered and counted by civil registration systems, and identifies three variants that generally perform the best, the second paper uses data from 166 demographic and health surveys to develop and validate new empirically based methods of estimating under-five mortality, and the third paper describes a novel method, the Corrected Sibling Survival method, that measures adult mortality in countries without good vital registration by use of histories taken from surviving siblings.

The related Perspective discusses these three research articles that address the measurement and analysis of child and adult mortality data collected through death registration, censuses, and household surveys.

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Also published this week, a Health in Action piece that discusses a network that aims to improve infectious disease management through integrated, collaborative clinical research in South East Asia and a Policy Forum that discusses the critical importance of reducing global neonatal mortality in developing countries and how community-based approaches can help.

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