and covering 188 countries. for comparison, the u.n. has 193 member states. the project is chronicled in a book that came out recently called "epic measures: one doctor, 7 billion patients" by jeremy n. smith. dr. christopher murray, the public health guru behind the project, realized that to fight disease and death around the world more effectively, health care officials needed to know exactly what was killing and hurting the humans on planet earth. so he and his team are grabbing every bit of data they can get their hands on, a case of moneyball meets medicine, as smith notes. what's interesting about their latest report on 2013 is that there were huge variations among different countries when you look at causes of death. for example, three persian gulf states, the uae, saudi arabia, and oman, had very high road injury death rates.