[EQ] Asymmetries of Poverty: Why Global Burden of Disease Valuations Underestimate the Burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases

Asymmetries of Poverty:
Why Global Burden of Disease Valuations Underestimate the Burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases

 

Charles H. King, Anne-Marie Bertino

Center for Global Health and Diseases, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, Cleveland, Ohio, USA

PLoS Negl Trop Dis 2(3): e209. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000209

 

Available online at: http://www.plosntds.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0000209

 

“……The disability-adjusted life year (DALY) initially appeared attractive as a health metric in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) program, as it purports to be a comprehensive health assessment that encompassed premature mortality, morbidity, impairment, and disability. It was originally thought that the DALY would be useful in policy settings, reflecting normative valuations as a standardized unit of ill health. However, the design of the DALY and its use in policy estimates contain inherent flaws that result in systematic undervaluation of the importance of chronic diseases, such as many of the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), in world health……”

Measuring the Burden of Neglected Tropical Diseases: The Global Burden of Disease Framework

 

Colin D. Mathers, Information, Evidence and Research Cluster, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Majid Ezzati, Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard University Initiative for Global Health, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America

Alan D. Lopez, School of Population Health, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

PLoS Negl Trop Dis 1(2): e114. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000114

 

“……Reliable, comparable information about the main causes of disease and injury in populations, and how these are changing, is a critical input for debates about priorities in the health sector. Traditional sources of information about the descriptive epidemiology of diseases, injuries, and risk factors are generally incomplete, fragmented, and of uncertain reliability and comparability. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study has provided a conceptual and methodological framework to quantify and compare the health of populations using a summary measure of both mortality and disability, the disability-adjusted life year (DALY).

 

This paper describes key features of the Global Burden of Disease analytic approach, which provides a standardized measurement framework to permit comparisons across diseases and injuries, as well as risk factors, and a systematic approach to the evaluation of data. ……”

 

Published: November 7, 2007

 

The Global Burden of Disease Assessments—WHO Is Responsible?
Stein C, Kuchenmüller T, Hendrickx S, Prüss-Űstün A, Wolfson L, et al. (2007)
PLoS Negl Trop Dis 1(3): e161. doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0000161
http://www.plosntds.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pntd.0000161

 

 

Open-access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

 

 

 

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