The Bulletin of the World Health Organization is an international journal of public health with a special focus on developing countries. Since it was first published in 1948 the Bulletin has become one of the world's leading public health journals. As the flagship periodical of the World Health Organization (WHO) the Bulletin draws on WHO experts as editorial advisers reviewers and authors as well as on external collaborators. In this month's issue: Trans-disciplinary research to improve health systems disaster readiness and response; Performance-based financing in low- and middle-income countries: still more questions than answers; Sentinel versus population-based surveillance of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine effectiveness; Regional disparities in the burden of disease attributable to unsafe water and poor sanitation in China; International shortfall inequality in life expectancy in women and in men 1950-2010; Evaluating the cost-effectiveness of combination antiretroviral therapy for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV in Uganda; A systematic review of Demographic and Health Surveys: data availability and utilization for research; Effects of condom social marketing on condom use in developing countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis 1990-2010; Achieving high coverage in Rwanda's national human papillomavirus vaccination programme; The voice of the most vulnerable: lessons from the nuclear crisis in Fukushima Japan; The role of biomedical engineering in disaster management in resource-limited settings.