Continued from home page... Readers of our website and now of World Nutrition come from all continents. After looking through our statistics for April, we did a check for one week, 1-7 May. People from 75 countries were recorded as having sessions on the site. Association president Barrie Margetts says: ‘This is what being a world association is all about. We have members and readers from all continents. As somebody who does a lot of work with colleagues in Africa and India, it’s especially good to see that our website and WN already have a great number of readers from less-resourced countries’.

Between 1 and 7 May readers from 24 Asian countries or territories had sessions on the site. In order of numbers as recorded, they were from India, Russia, Bangladesh, Thailand, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Lebanon, the Philippines, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Hong Kong, China, Cambodia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Azerbaijan, Singapore, Pakistan, Bhutan, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Jordan, and Laos. (You may feel that not all these are in Asia, but that’s where our machine places them). Next came Europe, with sessions in order of numbers from 23 countries: the UK, Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Moldova, Sweden, Spain, Lithuania, Austria, Norway, Portugal, Greece, Luxembourg, Finland, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, the Czech and the Slovak Republics, and Belgium.. People from 13 African countries, Mauritius, South Africa, Uganda, Mozambique, Malawi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana and Cameroon, had sessions. Then, readers from seven North and Central American countries, the USA, Canada, Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, in that order. Then there were five from the Australia-Pacific region, from Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, Micronesia and Samoa. Then a pathetic three from South America, apparently from Uruguay, Brazil and Colombia. (OK, if Latin America, the total would be eight). Perhaps we shouldn’t say that our site and WN have readers from all continents – spot-checks have not turned up any sessions from Antarctica.

Initially we were intrigued by the volume of sessions from Russia, Mauritius and Uruguay. Our technical advisors gave us an explanation. Our system records the total traffic – and actually now under-records it (see below). Every system (including that of the UK parliament, and also randomised controlled trials) also contains ‘fudge factors’. Some big email providers have the equivalent of telephone exchanges grouped in one country. Thus, we are advised, some sessions actually from readers in Brazil may well be routed through, and counted as if from, Uruguay.

Also, now we are getting into nerd-land, our splendiferous offering of free pdf WN and other downloads will result in our gizmo under-recording actual traffic. Take last month. We know that a number of people accessing WN who are networked, have strong feelings about ‘The great vitamin A fiasco’ commentary, and have downloaded it (which is recorded as one session) and have sent it to many of their pals (which our gizmo cannot record) some of whom have sent it to their pals (ditto). So, as should be said of all statistics, treat them with caution and, in our case, assume that the overall gizmo records under-record reality, by an unknown amount.

All this said, readers please do get in touch with us, and tell us your suggestions and give us your advice. Better yet, apply to become Association members. All comments are more than welcome – use the facility below, please. It will be particularly helpful if you tell us that you can support the Association and our work in your country.