The global distribution of fatal pesticide self-poisoning: Systematic review

Evidence is accumulating that pesticide self-poisoning is one of the most commonly used methods of suicide worldwide, but the magnitude of the problem and the global distribution of these deaths is unknown.

We have systematically reviewed the worldwide literature to estimate the number of pesticide suicides in each of the World Health Organisation's six regions and the global burden of fatal self-poisoning with pesticides. We used the following data sources: Medline, EMBASE and psycINFO (1990-2007), papers cited in publications retrieved, the worldwide web (using Google) and our personal collections of papers and books. Our aim was to identify papers enabling us to estimate the proportion of a country's suicides due to pesticide self-poisoning.