woman to be offered help. Violence has a profound effect on women’s health. Some arrive at hospital with broken bones, while others suffer pregnancy-related complications and mental illness. The two reports from the WHO – one on the prevalence of violence, the other offering guidelines to healthcare staff on helping women – are the work of Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno, lead specialist in gender, reproductive rights, sexual health and adolescence at WHO, and Professor Charlotte Watts, an epidemiologist who specializes in gender, violence and health, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “For the first time, we have compared data from all over the world on the magnitude of partner violence and sexual violence by non-partners and the impact of these sorts of violence on health,” said Garcia-Moreno. These included HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, depression, women turning to alcohol, unwanted pregnancies and low-birthweight babies. There were variations in the rates of violence against women in different regions of the world but, said Garcia-Moreno, “in whatever region we looked at, it is unacceptably high”. Even in high-income countries, 23.2% of women will suffer physical and/or sexual violence from a partner in their lives, their data from 81 countries shows. The global figure for women attacked by partners was 30%. More sexual