Only two countries recorded human cases of guinea worm disease in 2024

This is really one of the best charts by @ourworldindata.org 📊 Amazing how much research and work goes into creating a chart like this. And it's such a good insight into society.

The threat of extinction is not spread evenly across the tree of life. To protect animals, it’s important to know which ones are most threatened and why. Of all vertebrates (animals with a backbone and skull), amphibians are most threatened with extinction.

Launch day 🚀 We’ve just released @chartlecc.bsky.social - a daily chart game! Your job is to guess which country is represented by the red line in today's chart. You get 5 tries, no other clues! Play today, come back tomorrow for a different chart with new data and share with your chart friends 📈

Global maternal mortality rates have fallen by almost 60% since 1985

Spain is having its largest wildfire year in well over a decade

Homicide rates in Ecuador have increased steeply in the last few years

Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in public health. They have saved hundreds of millions of lives by preventing deadly diseases like measles, polio, and smallpox. Before vaccines, these infections were common; surviving them often meant facing severe complications or lifelong disability.

✍️ New article: "The world left its fight against tuberculosis unfinished — how can we complete the job?"

💡New feature rolling out: switch between different indicators on our data pages! For example, on our page showing childhood vaccination coverage, you can easily switch between the share and number of children vaccinated (and unvaccinated), and compare across vaccines or focus on a particular one.

✍️ New article: The end of tuberculosis that wasn’t

💡 Very excited to announce new features: better interactive maps! 🗺️ – Enhanced country/region selection with several sorting options and a bar chart preview – Selecting a country highlights it and shows its value on the map – Zooming to your selection brings up a 3D globe view 🌍

Progress can sometimes be slow, but with persistence it is possible. Take the case of leaded gasoline.

📊 Data update: We've just updated the data in our charts on homicides. The data comes from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime 2025 release. This update was led on our team by @spoonerf.bsky.social.

In a new article, @scientificdiscovery.dev and @spoonerf.bsky.social tell the story of measles vaccines and their life-saving impact: ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

Few things are more heartbreaking than the death of a young child. For most of humanity’s past, these tragedies occurred all too frequently — half of all children died. This was true no matter where in the world a child was born, even in the richest countries.

In just the last 50 years, it’s estimated that measles vaccinations have prevented over 90 million deaths worldwide. In a new article, @spoonerf.bsky.social and I describe how they were developed and scaled up worldwide, and the impact they've had:

An important reminder that measles vaccines save millions of lives every year across the world. The measles vaccine is arguably the most life-saving vaccine in use. Our latest article from @scientificdiscovery.dev and @spoonerf.bsky.social: ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

‘The data shows that just one dose cuts the chances of measles by about 95%, and two doses do even better.’ Timely review of the data on measles vaccines from @ourworldindata.org ourworldindata.org/measles-vacc...

In 2025, the peak cherry blossom of happened on April 4th. This long-run data is a proxy for how the climate has changed. Since the early 20th century, the combined effects of urbanization and higher temperatures due to climate change have gradually moved the peak blossom earlier in the year.

Vaccination eliminated polio from the United States 🧵

A flu lineage has likely gone extinct since 2020 🧵

Rising global temperatures can influence the timing of events, such as when crops are ready to plant and harvest and when flowers and trees bloom. One example is the timing of the peak cherry tree blossom in Kyoto, Japan, where records stretch back to the ninth century — that’s over 1200 years.

Most births in Europe are to mothers in their thirties

In 2015, women in their thirties overtook those in their twenties to become the age group having the most babies in Europe. ourworldindata.org/data-insight...

📢ANALYSIS: UK emissions fell 3.6% in 2024 to lowest since 1872 🏭Coal lowest since 1666, when Great Fire ravaged London 🚗EVs pushed oil down despite more traffic, saving £1.7bn 🌇Gas down on "cleanest ever" power 📈📉Since 1990, CO2 -54% / GDP +84% www.carbonbrief.org/... 1/9

New: We've updated our long-run chart on the annual number of measles cases in the United States, with data since 1919. The data now spans up to 2025 and updates weekly. ourworldindata.org/grapher/numb...

🌡 New on @ourworldindata.org: We added global temperature anomaly charts *coloured by El Nino / La Nina periods*. Today's "cool" years are warmer than "warm" years of the past. [New article and charts by my colleague Veronika Samborska and I: ourworldindata.org/global-tempe... ]

📢 New R package on CRAN: {owidapi}! Easily pull chart data from @ourworldindata.org into R: fetch data, explore datasets & embed charts in docs & Shiny apps (experimental). Feedback & ideas welcome 🙏

How could @ourworldindata.org maps be better? Do you experience any annoyances or pain points when you interact with our maps? Is there something you wish you could do that you currently can’t? What’s the next cool thing we could build on top of our maps? Any notes welcome! Thank you 🙏

Check out these blog posts from users showing how they work with our new data download API in Python and R: @allendowney.bsky.social, Python: www.allendowney.com/blog/2024/11... kjytay, R: www.r-bloggers.com/2025/01/down... Let us know how you're using the features & how we could improve them!

Here is what the censoring of data.cdc.gov looks like over time

Genuinely horrifying. 20 million people receive HIV antiviral treatment from the program annually. Mothers with HIV would transmit it to their infants at birth if not for perinatal antiviral treatment. This should be resumed as soon as possible. Every day of delay means more lives lost.

Papua New Guinea has 840 living languages — more than any other country. A living language is one that is spoken by at least one person as their first language. The chart shows the ten countries with the most living languages as of 2024.

‘Bending the curve towards nature recovery: building on Georgina Mace's legacy for a biodiverse future’ - a special issue of Phil Trans R Soc B in honour of a very special biodiversity scientist - is published today by @royalsociety.org. royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202...

Thank you, Jimmy Carter. This chart is on a log scale. This year there have been just 7 cases of guinea worm. ourworldindata.org/grapher/numb...

Here's an early Christmas present. @spoonerf.bsky.social has jazzed up our map of inaccessible monuments. Investigate the hidden heritage near you! 👇 spoonerf.github.io/inaccessible...

Many people talk about the "Golden Age of Antibiotics", but I hadn't seen it visualized properly. Just how many types of antibiotics were discovered during that time? So, I visualized it myself!

🧵 Ever wonder how far most international migrants travel from their home countries? It turns out, not very far at all. For @ourworldindata.org, Tuna Acisu and I took a closer look at the data—and the results might change how you see global migration.

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time. Understanding this is key to solving big global problems. We believe data & research can help us understand both the problems we face & the progress that’s possible. 🧵

Large amounts of antibiotics are used in livestock, and overuse is a risk for antibiotic resistance. But there are ways to reduce this — and several countries have shown how.

“In 1800, 1 in 3 people on earth were Chinese. Today, it’s less than 1 in 5” From Tom Whitwell's "52 things I learned in 2024": medium.com/@tomwhitwell... h/t @maxroser.bsky.social

"We can't win a war against water" - I went to the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe, Holderness in East Yorks, to look for the lost medieval pirate town of Ravenser Odd, and ask whether we need to learn to let go of the places we call home, for @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/how-t...

Until 2017, the age group with the greatest number of deaths globally was those aged under five years. An interactive version of the chart can be found here: ourworldindata.org/grapher/annu...

Spotting and fixing data issues: how we help improve data quality on and off our publication

At @ourworldindata.org, we’ve just launched new data download options and a Chart Data API to make it even easier to access and reuse the data on our site! Here’s a quick overview of what’s new: 🧵

Our World in Data is on Bluesky. You can find us here! go.bsky.app/RC8Wsup

Abortion access in the U.S. is full of twists, turns, and roadblocks. To illustrate how difficult it is to get care, we built a maze for each state where the difficulty is calculated by the state’s policies. This is the United States of Abortion Mazes. pudding.cool/2024/10/abor...

The 2024 Living Planet Index (LPI) reports a 73% average decline in wildlife populations. While extremely worrying, the numbers presented in the LPI report are often misunderstood. Read our guide to understanding what the LPI does and doesn't mean: ourworldindata.org/2024-living-...

Road deaths in the United Kingdom have fallen by three-quarters since 1970