Global Burden of Disease (GBD)

Global Burden of Disease analysis provides a comprehensive and comparable assessment of mortality and loss of health due to diseases, injuries and risk factors for all regions of the world. The overall burden of disease is assessed using the disability-adjusted life year (DALY), a time-based measure that combines years of life lost due to premature mortality and years of life lost due to time lived in states of less than full health.

The WHO GBD project draws on a wide range of data sources to quantify global and regional effects of diseases, injuries and risk factors on population health. The latest WHO assessment of deaths by cause is for the year 2008 and is available on the right column of this page. The latest comprehensive assessment of burden of disease (deaths, DALYs and related statistics) for 2004 is also available, together with updated projections to the year 2030, and documentation of methods and data sources. Due to changes in data and some methods (particularly for child deaths), the 2008 estimates are not comparable to the earlier 2004 estimates for countries without good death registration data. Manuals, software and other resources are also provided for carrying out burden of disease studies.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation and other academic partners have collaborated on a new GBD 2010 study, published on 14 December 2012, which provides regional estimates of deaths and DALYs (using a new method for calculation of DALYs) for the years 1990, 2005 and 2010. Please visit the IHME website for results of that study. In some areas, the results of the GBD differ substantially from analyses done by WHO and other United Nations agencies. In many other areas, the GBD results update and are broadly similar to previous WHO analyses. It is anticipated that the GBD 2010 results will contribute to revisions for WHO global health estimates in 2013.