By Deva-Marie Beck, PhD, RN — Editor-in-Chief

As the year 2013 year now draws to a close, we — on the growing grassroots-to-global teams of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH) — the NIGH World Board of Directors, The NIGH USA Board of Directors, the NIGH World Advisory Board, the NIGH USA Advisory Board and NIGH’s United Nations DPI NGO Representatives in New York City — wish to express our deep gratitude. THANKS to all of you who have participated in NIGH's growth by accessing our website nearly two million times! So far, from January through the end of October, NIGH's website has received almost 1.9 million hits from 80,367 unique visitors. This number is up quite-considerably from a total of 1.2 million hits across the twelve months of 2012.

For Example — Highest Hit Rates in March of 2013

In our record-highest hit-rate month so far, 16,191 unique visitors accessed NIGH's website 436,868 times. Here below are the March 2013 statistics from 146 nations and territories:

Of course, we were visited primarily by English-reading nations, because — at the moment — our webpage is almost entirely in English text. Because the United States has the largest number of people on NIGH's total e-mailing list of nearly 22,000 people — as expected — we received, the most hits from Americans at 220,250.

As well, from across the English-reading Commonwealth, we received 19,403 hits from Canada, 21,234 hits from the United Kingdom, 13,968 from India and a size-able number from English- speaking Asia and South Pacific — 8,326 from Australia, 2,150 from New Zealand, 2,004 from Malaysia, 1,559 from Indonesia, 766 from Singapore, 741 from Hong Kong, and more than 150 hits from Fiji, the Samoan Islands and Tonga.

In English-reading Africa, we received 1,628 hits from South Africa, 375 from Nigeria, 230 from Tanzania, 210 from Ghana, 209 from Zambia, 168 from Kenya, 143 from Zimbabwe, 112 from Malawi and more than 400 hits from Botswana, Lesotho, Mauritius, Namibia, Swaziland and Uganda.

We also were quite surprised and gratified to have received a substantial number of visits from nations of the former Soviet Union. From the Russian Federation we received 23,315 visitors and 27,260 visits from the Ukraine! Also, from places that seem more remote to us — as we write to you from our editorial offices in Canada and the United States — we were pleased to see 3,155 visits from Kazakhstan, 3,553 from Belarus, 1,838 from Moldova, 1,106 from Latvia, 646 from Georgia, 560 from Lithuania, 542 from Armenia, 412 from Azerbaijan, 304 from Estonia, and even 92 hits from Kyrgyzstan, 72 from Uzbekistan and 44 from Tajikistan.

In nations emerging from behind the former Iron Curtain, 1,880 hits were from Romania, 1,211 from Poland, 887 from the Czech Republic and 177 from the Slovak Republic, 510 from Bulgaria, 400 from Hungary and a total of 1,161 hits from nations of the former Yugoslavia — Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.

In Scandinavia, we received 2, 062 hits from Sweden, 919 from Finland, 789 from Norway, 778 from Denmark and at total of 92 hits from Greenland and Iceland.

From French-reading Europe, we received 4, 577 hits from France, 1,013 from Belgium, 263 from Luxembourg and even 2 hits from Monaco. In French-reading Africa, 301 were from in French Martinique, 150 from Senegal and 131 hits from Cameroon. From French Africa, we also received a total of 100 hits from Benin, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, the Seychelles and even 2 hits from remote war-torn Chad.

From multi-lingual Switzerland, where the Swiss people read in French, German and Italian, we received 1,263 hits.

From Western-Europe, we received 4,197 hits from Germany, 2,497 from The Netherlands, 228 from Austria and 207 hits were listed specifically as from the European Union. People from Ireland hit on NIGH's website 1,256 times, from Greece, 1,037 times, 503 from Cyprus and 306 from Malta.

Bridging across Europe and Asia, we received 1,317 hits from Turkey.

From the Portuguese-reading world, we received 3,284 from Brazil and 1,030 from Portugal and more than 45 hits from Angola, Macau and Mozambique. From Italy and Ethiopia — the Italian-reading world — we received 3,625 hits.

From Spain we received 3,504 hits and from Mexico, 1,057. From Spanish-reading South America, we received 1,427 hits from Venezuela, 797 from Columbia, 469 from Argentina, 462 from Peru, 326 from Chile and 303 hits from Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay.

From Central America, people hit NIGH's website 464 times — from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

From the Caribbean Islands, we received 859 hits from Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago and the Virgin Islands (British).

From the Dutch-reading Americas, we received 212 hits from Suriname and The Netherlands Antilles.

From Asia — where English is increasingly understood — we were still surprised to be receiving so many visitors — in March, 2013 alone. For instance, we received 5,950 hits from China, 4,960 from Japan, 3,353 from the Philippines, 1,605 from Thailand, 560 from Taiwan, 426 from South Korea and even 126 hits from Mongolia.

From Southeast Asia, we received 2,004 hits from Malaysia, 1,559 from Indonesia, 890 from Vietnam, 427 from Bangladesh, 163 from Sri Lanka, 145 from Cambodia and a total of 131 hits from Brunei Darussalam, Laos, the Maldives and Myanmar.

From the remote mountainous regions of Central Asia, we received hits from 2,099 Pakistan, 108 from Nepal and even 48 hits from Afghanistan.

From the Middle East, we received 1,304 visits from Israel. As well, across the Arabic-reading world, hits included 2,822 from Egypt, 2,594 from Saudi Arabia, 753 from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), 490 from Iran, 470 from Morocco, 238 from Iraq, 210 from Qatar, 177 from Lebanon, 158 from Bahrain, 156 from Jordan, 128 from Kuwait, 101 from Tunisia, 106 from the Palestinian Territories and a total of 148 hits from Algeria, Oman, Sudan and Yemen.

NOW COMING IN 2014, please watch for more stories to be told and for new language texts — with imbedded translation capacities. These will be included in NIGH's upcoming website upgrades.

We know that we can only truly represent and understand our rich multi-cultural world — if we do so! THANKS Again!