Most comprehensive global study—analysing 286 causes of death, 369 diseases and injuries, and 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories—reveals how well the world’s population were prepared in terms of underlying health for the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2020
August 27, 2020
News Release
A new study projects that 3.1 billion people will still lack effective health service coverage in 2023, with 968 million of those residing in South Asia. This falls short of the World Health Organization (WHO) goal of 1 billion more people benefiting from universal health coverage (UHC) between 2019 and 2023.
February 13, 2020
News Release
Rates of people needing dialysis have increased more than 40% since 1990, but access to this life-saving treatment is still markedly inequitable, according to a new scientific study.
January 22, 2020
News Release
Twice as many men as women are dying from liver cirrhosis, according to a new scientific study.
January 16, 2020
News Release
Twice as many people as previously believed are dying of sepsis worldwide, according to an analysis published today in The Lancet. Among them are a disproportionately high number of children in poor areas.
January 8, 2020
News Release
Road injuries have become more frequent but less fatal over the past three decades, according to a new scientific study. The probability of dying from a road accident increased in only five nations since 1990 – Central African Republic, Jamaica, Somalia, Swaziland, and United Arab Emirates.
2019
December 19, 2019
News Release
A Global Burden Disease study published last April and led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation that concludes poor diets cause one in five deaths globally has been ranked 11th in the 2019 Altmetric 100, the annual listing by the UK-based data science firm of research that most captured the public’s interest.
December 18, 2019
News Release
Heat-related incidents resulted in nearly 9 million injuries and more than 120,000 deaths worldwide in 2017, according to a new scientific study. Fires, heat, and hot substances, such as cooking oil or a hot stove, disproportionately kill young children and the elderly.
November 25, 2019
News Release
The lack of data, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, combined with the absence of international standards for data management, is hindering efforts in measuring progress toward meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
November 20, 2019
News Release
It’s no secret that residents of the five Nordic countries live longer and healthier lives than the global average, yet subtle – but consequential – health differences remain, likely the result of alcohol use, smoking, and other risk factors, according to a new scientific study.
October 30, 2019
News Release
Despite large declines since 1990 in child deaths from pneumonia and the flu, these and other lower respiratory infections (LRIs) remain a leading killer of children under age 5. A new scientific study finds LRIs responsible for one in seven child deaths globally.
September 3, 2019
News Release
Health analyses of people at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in low- and middle-income countries may soon improve, thanks to new computer modeling. The new modeling is a joint project of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and the University of Cambridge.
July 29, 2019
News Release
While the number of new cancer cases in children and adolescents (aged 0-19 years) is relatively low at around 416,500 globally in 2017, treatment-related ill-health and disability and fatal cancer are estimated to cause around 11.5 million years of healthy life lost globally every year, according to the first Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) to assess childhood and adolescent cancer burden in 195 countries in 2017, published in The Lancet Oncology journal.
June 24, 2019
News Release
Chronic diseases, such as stroke, ischemic heart disease, and lung cancer, now represent the leading causes of premature death in China, according to a new scientific study.
April 29, 2019
News Release
The United States is one of only eight countries in the world where decreases in child and adolescent mortality over a 27-year period haven’t also been matched by reductions in maternal mortality, according to a new scientific study. This divergent trend also was found in American Samoa, Canada, Greece, Guam, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Zimbabwe. Of these countries, the United States had the largest increase in maternal mortality rate at 67.5%.
April 3, 2019
News Release
Poor diet is responsible for more deaths globally than tobacco, high blood pressure, or any other health risk, according to a new scientific study. Consuming low amounts of healthy foods, such as whole grains, and too much unhealthy foods, including sweetened beverages, account for one in every five deaths globally.
April 3, 2019
News Release
Exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution could, on average shorten the life of a child born today by 20 months, according to a new global study, State of Global Air 2019.
March 13, 2019
News Release
Democratic rule, enforced by regular free and fair elections, appears to make an important contribution to adult health by increasing government spending on health and potentially reducing deaths from several non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and transport injuries. Conversely, autocracies that escape this general scrutiny, and do not have the same external pressures or support from global health donors to tackle NCDs and injuries, may have less incentive to finance their prevention and treatment, and seem to underperform as a result.
March 7, 2019
News Release
A 30-year gap separates countries with the highest and lowest ages at which people experience the health problems of a 65-year-old, according to a new scientific study. Researchers found 76-year-olds in Japan and 46-year-olds in Papua New Guinea have the same level of age-related health problems as an “average” person aged 65.
January 30, 2019
News Release
UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s new NHS Long Term Plan, a 10-year blueprint for health services, relies substantially on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study to frame priorities for tackling premature death and disability.