Burdens of Disease
Disease burden is the impact of a health problem in an area measured by financial cost, mortality, morbidity, or other indicators.
There are several measures used to quantify the burden imposed by diseases on people. The years of potential life lost (YPLL) is a simple estimate of the number of years that a person's life was shortened due to a disease. For example, if a person dies at the age of 65 from a disease, and would probably have lived until age 80 without that disease, then that disease has caused a loss of 15 years of potential life. YPLL measurements do not account for how disabled a person is before dying, so the measurement treats a person who dies suddenly and a person who died at the same age after decades of illness as equivalent. In 2004, the World Health Organization calculated that 932 million years of potential life were lost to premature death.
The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) and disability-adjusted life year (DALY) metrics are similar, but take into account whether the person was healthy after diagnosis. In addition to the number of years lost due to premature death, these measurements add part of the years lost to being sick. Unlike YPLL, these measurements show the burden imposed on people who are very sick, but who live a normal lifespan. A disease that has high morbidity, but low mortality, will have a high DALY and a low YPLL. In 2004, the World Health Organization calculated that 1.5 billion disability-adjusted life years were lost to disease and injury.
Disease category | Percent of all YPLLs lost, worldwide | Percent of all DALYs lost, worldwide | Percent of all YPLLs lost, Europe | Percent of all DALYs lost, Europe | Percent of all YPLLs lost, US and Canada | Percent of all DALYs lost, US and Canada |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Infectious and parasitic diseases, especially lower respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria | 37% | 26% | 9% | 6% | 5% | 3% |
Neuropsychiatric conditions, e.g. depression | 2% | 13% | 3% | 19% | 5% | 28% |
Injuries, especially motor vehicle accidents | 14% | 12% | 18% | 13% | 18% | 10% |
Cardiovascular diseases, principally heart attacks and stroke | 14% | 10% | 35% | 23% | 26% | 14% |
Premature birth and other perinatal deaths | 11% | 8% | 4% | 2% | 3% | 2% |
Cancer | 8% | 5% | 19% | 11% | 25% | 13% |
Read more about this topic: Diseased
Famous quotes containing the words burdens of, burdens and/or disease:
“Women are to be lifted up to a physical equality with man by placing upon their shoulders equal burdens of labor, equal responsibilities of state-craft; they are to be brought down from their altruistic heights by being released from all obligations of purity, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and made free of the world of passion and self-indulgence, after the model set them by men of low and materialistic ideals.”
—Caroline Fairfield Corbin (b. c. 1835?)
“If the justices would only retire when they have become burdens to the court itself, or when they recognize themselves that their faculties have become impaired, I would grieve sincerely when they passed away, and you would not feel like such a hypocrite as you do when you are going through the formality of sending telegrams of condolence and giving out interviews for proprietys sake.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“Sadism is not an infectious disease that strikes a person all of a sudden. It has a long prehistory in childhood and always originates in the desperate fantasies of a child who is searching for a way out of a hopeless situation.”
—Alice Miller (20th century)