Acute meningitis has a high case-fatality rate and survivors can have severe lifelong disability. We aimed to provide a comprehensive assessment of the levels and trends of global meningitis burden that could help to guide introduction, continuation, and ongoing development of vaccines and treatment programs.
Population estimates underpin demographic and epidemiological research and are used to track progress on numerous international indicators of health and development. To date, internationally available estimates of population and fertility, although useful, have not been produced with transparent and replicable methods and do not use standardized estimates of mortality. We present single calendar-year and single-year of age estimates of fertility and population by sex with standardized and replicable methods.
Assessments of age-specific mortality and life expectancy have been done by the UN Population Division, Department of Economics and Social Affairs (UNPOP), the United States Census Bureau, WHO, and as part of previous iterations of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD). Previous iterations of the GBD used population estimates from UNPOP, which were not derived in a way that was internally consistent with the estimates of the numbers of deaths in the GBD. The present iteration of the GBD, GBD 2017, improves on previous assessments and provides timely estimates of the mortality experience of populations globally.
Global development goals increasingly rely on country-specific estimates for benchmarking a nation’s progress. To meet this need, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 estimated global, regional, national, and, for selected locations, subnational cause-specific mortality beginning in the year 1980. Here we report an update to that study, making use of newly available data and improved methods. GBD 2017 provides a comprehensive assessment of cause-specific mortality for 282 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1980 to 2017.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2017) includes a comprehensive assessment of incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability (YLDs) for 354 causes in 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2017. Previous GBD studies have shown how the decline of mortality rates from 1990 to 2016 has led to an increase in life expectancy, an aging global population, and an expansion of the non-fatal burden of disease and injury. These studies have also shown how a substantial portion of the world’s population experiences non-fatal health loss with considerable heterogeneity among different causes, locations, ages, and sexes. Ongoing objectives of the GBD study include increasing the level of estimation detail, improving analytical strategies, and increasing the amount of high-quality data.
How long one lives, how many years of life are spent in good and poor health, and how the population’s state of health and leading causes of disability change over time all have implications for policy, planning, and provision of services. We comparatively assessed the patterns and trends of healthy life expectancy (HALE), which quantifies the number of years of life expected to be lived in good health, and the complementary measure of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), a composite measure of disease burden capturing both premature mortality and prevalence and severity of ill health, for 359 diseases and injuries for 195 countries and territories over the past 28 years.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017 comparative risk assessment (CRA) is a comprehensive approach to risk factor quantification that offers a useful tool for synthesizing evidence on risks and risk-outcome associations. With each annual GBD study, we update the GBD CRA to incorporate improved methods, new risks and risk-outcome pairs, and new data on risk exposure levels and risk-outcome associations.
Efforts to establish the 2015 baseline and monitor early implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) highlight both great potential for and threats to improving health by 2030. To fully deliver on the SDG aim of “leaving no one behind,” it is increasingly important to examine the health-related SDGs beyond national-level estimates. As part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2017 (GBD 2017), we measured progress on 41 of 52 health-related SDG indicators and estimated the health-related SDG index for 195 countries and territories for the period 1990–2017, projected indicators to 2030, and analyzed global attainment.
Understanding how prevalence, incidence, and mortality of motor neuron diseases change over time and by location is crucial for understanding the causes of these disorders and for health care planning. Our aim was to produce estimates of incidence, prevalence, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for motor neuron diseases for 195 countries and territories from 1990 to 2016 as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016.
Alcohol and drug use can have negative consequences on the health, economy, productivity, and social aspects of communities. We aimed to use data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 to calculate global and regional estimates of the prevalence of alcohol, amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, and opioid dependence, and to estimate global disease burden attributable to alcohol and drug use between 1990 and 2016, and for 195 countries and territories within 21 regions, and within seven super-regions
The addition of neonatal (NN) mortality targets in the Sustainable Development Goals highlights the increased need for age-specific quantification of mortality trends, detail that is not provided by summary birth histories (SBHs). Several methods exist to indirectly estimate trends in under-5 mortality from SBHs; however, efforts to monitor mortality trends in important age groups such as the first month and first year of life have yet to utilize the vast amount of SBH data available from household surveys and censuses.
The host, microbial, and environmental factors that contribute to variation in tuberculosis (TB) disease are incompletely understood. This study provides the most comprehensive systematic analysis of the evidence for diversity in bacterial strains that cause TB disease. The results show both geographic and epidemiological differences between strains, which could inform our understanding of the global burden of TB.
The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2016 provided comprehensive estimates of health loss globally. Decision-makers in Kenya can use GBD subnational data to target health interventions and address county-level variation in the burden of disease.
Previous studies have reported national and regional Global Burden of Disease (GBD) estimates for the UK. Because of substantial variation in health within the UK, action to improve it requires comparable estimates of disease burden and risks at country and local levels. The slowdown in the rate of improvement in life expectancy requires further investigation. We use GBD 2016 data on mortality, causes of death, and disability to analyze the burden of disease in the countries of the UK and within local authorities in England by deprivation quintile.
Through the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) studies, headache has emerged as a major global public health concern. We aimed to use data from the GBD 2016 study to provide new estimates for prevalence and years of life lived with disability (YLDs) for migraine and tension-type headache and to present the methods and results in an accessible way for clinicians and researchers of headache disorders.
In 2016, less than 4% of development assistance for health could be tied to funding for human resources. Given the central role skilled health workers play in health systems, in order to make credible progress in reducing disparities in health and attaining the goal of universal health coverage for all by 2030, it may be appropriate for more resources to be mobilized in order to guarantee adequate manpower to deliver key health interventions.
Understanding potential trajectories in health and drivers of health is crucial to guiding long-term investments and policy implementation. This study provides a novel approach to modeling life expectancy, all-cause mortality and cause of death forecasts – and alternative future scenarios – for 250 causes of death from 2016 to 2040 in 195 countries and territories.
The Salud Mesoamérica Initiative is a public-private partnership aimed at reducing maternal and child morbidity and mortality for the poorest populations in Central America and the southernmost state of Mexico.
Our aim was to describe the total disease burden in Norway in 2016, its development over the last 10 years and sex differences in the disease burden. Non-fatal health loss constitutes a large and increasing proportion of the disease burden in the Norwegian population, which will bring new challenges for the health care system.
Both the IHME and World Bank human capital measures utilize data on mortality, health, education, and learning to create a comprehensive metric of the human capital of the future workforce that is comparable across countries. The two measures differ, however, in their conceptual basis, including what is captured in each component, the data sources utilized, the methods of aggregation across the various components, and the countries and years for which estimates are produced. This document provides a comparison of the construction of these two human capital measures and a preliminary comparison of the results.
Neurological disorders are now the leading source of disability globally, and aging is increasing the burden of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. We aimed to determine the global burden of Parkinson’s disease between 1990 and 2016 to identify trends and to enable appropriate public health, medical, and scientific responses.
Shigella and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) are bacterial pathogens that are frequently associated with diarrheal disease, and are a significant cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. We aimed to analyze the global burden of shigella and ETEC diarrhea according to age, sex, geography, and year from 1990 to 2016.
Human capital is recognised as the level of education and health in a population and is considered an important determinant of economic growth. The World Bank has called for measurement and annual reporting of human capital to track and motivate investments in health and education and enhance productivity. We aim to provide a new comprehensive measure of human capital across countries globally.
Diarrheal diseases are the third leading cause of disease and death in children younger than 5 years of age in Africa and were responsible for an estimated 30 million cases of severe diarrhea and 330,000 deaths in 2015. Our findings showed concentrated areas of diarrheal disease and diarrhea-related death in countries that had a consistently high burden as well as in countries that had considerable national-level reductions in diarrhea burden.
Lower respiratory infections are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality around the world. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) Study 2016 provides an up-to-date analysis of the burden of lower respiratory infections in 195 countries. This study assesses cases, deaths, and etiologies spanning the past 26 years and shows how the burden of lower respiratory infection has changed in people of all ages.
