Recent concerns expressed by various national and international organisations about global livestock sector development and its consequences on the environment and on human and animal health suggest the need to reinforce efforts to monitor and collect more accurate and detailed statistics on livestock. Modern technologies for the organisation, analysis, dissemination and presentation of data and results enhance the contribution that these statistics can make towards the planning of efficient and sustainable animal production and health interventions. To this end, the Food and Agriculture Organization Animal Production and Health Division (FAO-AGA) has developed the Global Livestock Impact Mapping System (GLIMS). GLIMS provides a repository for sub-national data pertaining to the livestock sector and produces and distributes, through various channels and formats, a number of global public products, namely: the Gridded Livestock of the World (GLW), mapping the spatial distribution of the main livestock species, the Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas (GLiPHA), disseminating sub-national geo-referenced statistics, and the AGA Livestock Sector Briefs, which are concise national reports on the livestock sector. These products have a variety of applications. The authors focus attention on applications in the field of animal health, both to increase knowledge of the occurrence of livestock diseases and to assess their impact.