Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2012, 9 769 according to several authors the suicide rate in Sri Lanka has been falling from 47 in 1995 to 24 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005 [16,17] The biggest contributors to the absolute number of suicides in the world are China and India. According to Vijayakumar in 2004 more than half the suicides (54%) in the world occur in China and India [18]. In both of these countries, however, we cannot be sure of the accuracy of the suicide numbers provided to the WHO. Law and Liu concluded in their publication in 2008 that to date, China does not have a comprehensive vital statistics reporting system; there exists a relatively wide range of figures on suicide rates [19]. Phillips reported in 2002 [20] that the official figure of 13.9 suicides per 100,000 inhabitants for the period 1995–1999 was an understatement and offered his own estimated suicide rate of 23 per 100,000. This is partially because the official mortality figures provided to the WHO are based on data from about 10% of the population, although urban and rural sample areas are calculated separately. For India nationally representative cause of death distributions were derived from detailed tabulations from the Million Deaths Study and adjusted to the 2008 all-cause envelope [12]. One million suicide deaths in the world per year is a figure often used in discussions and presentations about the magnitude of the phenomenon. The latest WHO estimate of 782,000 suicides in a year is a notably smaller amount. However, this includes neither injury deaths of undetermined intent nor deaths from unknown causes which are generally believed to hide some suicides. Considering this underreporting one million suicide deaths per year is a worthwhile estimate. According to presented estimates there is a fourfold regional difference in the world in the male-female rate ratio of suicides. Europe, especially Eastern Europe, had the highest ratios while Asian countries had the lowest. China is believed to be the only country where females have a higher suicide rate than males. Cultural factors and regional differences in socio-economic situation play an important role in this. There will be changes in this indicator over time as cultural norms shift and economies take different development paths. 5. Limitations An undeniable limitation of this kind of world overview is the unavailability of data for many countries—therefore estimates have been used where necessary. Some countries have not updated their reported data to the WHO during the last years, so for a dozen countries latest data are from before the year 2000. Suicide registration procedures differ across countries making the direct comparison less trustworthy. Deaths of undetermined intent have been omitted from this analysis due to lack of worldwide data although in some countries they mask a notable part of other categories of injury deaths, completed suicides among them. 6. Conclusions The WHO has made valiant efforts to improve the reporting of injury mortality and as a result data about suicide from over 100 countries are now available as well as current estimates for the whole world. Analysis shows that during the last 50 years the heart of the problem of suicide mortality has shifted from Western Europe to Eastern Europe and now seems to be shifting to Asia. China and India are the biggest contributors to the number of suicides in the world, while South Korea has experienced enormous growth of the suicide rate during the past decade.