Measure of disease burden

G/Slasie Weldu
Id Number: chs/gmph/006/16
Department of Public Health
Submitted to Dr. Abrha
June 2024
Table of Contents

Contents
Table of Contents..............................................................................................................................................2
1 Introduction......................................................................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 Background..........................................................................................................................................3
1.2 Cause of death categories....................................................................................................................4
1.3 Other analysis categories.....................................................................................................................4
1.4 What is new in this update for years 2000-2019..................................................................................4
2 The disability-adjusted life year..................................................................................................................................6
2.1 Simplified DALY....................................................................................................................................7
2.2 Standard expected years of life lost for calculation of YLLs..................................................................7
2.3 Age weighting and time discounting....................................................................................................8
2.4 Prevalence versus incidence YLDs........................................................................................................9
2.5 Comorbidity adjustment.....................................................................................................................11
3 Disability weights for calculation of YLDs...........................................................................................................12
3.1 Evolution of methods for estimation of disability weights.................................................................12
3.2 Disability weights revisions for GBD 2016 and GHE 2016..................................................................12
4 YLD estimates for diseases and injuries...............................................................................................................14
4.2 Uncertainty in YLD estimates.............................................................................................................15
5.5 Conclusions........................................................................................................................................19
References................................................................................................................................................................................................. 20
1 Introduction
1.1 Background
A consistent and comparative description of the burden of diseases and injuries, and the risk factors that
cause them, is an important input to health decision-making and planning processes. Information that is
available on mortality and health in populations in all regions of the world is fragmentary and
sometimes inconsistent. Thus, a framework for integrating, validating, analyzing and disseminating such
information is useful to assess the comparative importance of diseases and injuries in causing premature
death, loss of health, and disability in different populations.
The World Bank commissioned the first Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study for its World
Development Report 1993 (World Bank, 1993) and the study was carried out in a collaboration between
the Harvard School of Public Health and the World Health Organization. This first GBD study
quantified the health effects of more than 100 diseases and injuries for eight regions of the world in
1990 (Murray & Lopez, 1996). It generated comprehensive and internally consistent estimates of
mortality and morbidity by age, sex and region. The study also introduced a new metric – the
disability-adjusted life year (DALY) – as a single measure to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries
and risk factors (Murray, 1996). The DALY is based on years of life lost from premature death and
years of life lived in less than full health; it is described in more detail in Section 2.
Drawing on extensive databases and information provided by Member States, WHO produced annually
updated GBD estimates for years 2000 to 2002. These were published in the WHO’s annual World
Health Reports, followed by two stand-alone reports for the year 2004 (WHO, 2008; WHO, 2009a). The
new estimates reflected an overhaul of methods for mortality estimation in the setting of sparse data,
improved approaches for dealing with problems in cause of death certification, new cause of death
modelling strategies, and use of improved tools for ensuring internal consistency of mortality and
epidemiological estimates (Mathers, Lopez & Murray, 2006; WHO, 2008). The GBD results for the year
2001 also provided a framework for cost-effectiveness and priority setting analyses carried out for the
Disease Control Priorities Project (DCPP), a joint project of the World Bank, WHO, and the National
Institutes of Health, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Jamison et al, 2006a). The GBD
results were documented in detail, with information on data sources and methods, and analyses of
uncertainty and sensitivity, in a book published as part of the DCPP (Lopez et al, 2006). The GBD cause
list was expanded to 136 causes (giving a total of 160 cause categories, including group totals). The
WHO GBD updates incrementally revised and updated estimates of incidence, prevalence and years of
healthy life lost due to disability (YLDs) for non-fatal health outcomes. By the time of the GBD 2004
study, 97 of the 136 causes had been updated, including all causes of public health importance or with
significant YLD contribution to DALYs.
In 2007, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided funding for a new GBD 2010 study, led by the
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, with key collaborating
institutions including WHO, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of
Queensland. This study also drew on wider epidemiological expertise through a network of about 40
expert working groups, comprising hundreds of disease and injury subject-matter experts including
many working in WHO programs. The GBD 2010 study developed new methods for assessing causes of
death and for synthesizing epidemiological data to produce estimates of incidence and prevalence of
conditions for 21 regions of the world.
To meet WHO’s need for comprehensive global health statistics, which brings together WHO
and interagency estimates for all-cause mortality and priority diseases and injuries, as well as drawing
on the
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work of academic collaborators, including IHME, updated Global Health Estimates (GHE) for mortality,
causes of death, and disease burden, are being progressively released. This commenced with the release
in mid-2013 of updated regional-level estimates of deaths by cause, age and sex for years 2000-2011
(WHO, 2013), followed by country-specific estimates for the years 2000-2012 (WHO, 2014), later
updated to years 2000-2015 (WHO, 2016), and years 2000-2016 (WHO, 2018).
To meet the need for DALY estimates consistent with the GHE for cause-specific mortality, WHO also
released regional- and country-level estimates of DALYs by cause, age and sex for years 2000-2016 at
http://www.who.int/healthinfo/global_health_estimates/en/ (WHO, 2018).
WHO has now released updated estimates of deaths and DALYs by cause, age, and sex for years 2000-
2019 as part of it update of Global Health Estimates 2019 (GHE2019). This technical paper documents
the data sources and methods used for preparation of the burden of disease estimates for years 2000-
2016.

1.2 Cause of death categories

The cause of death categories remain the same as those used in the previous WHO burden of disease
estimates. Annex Table A lists the cause categories and their definitions in terms of the International
Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10). The cause categories are grouped into three broad
cause groups: Group I (communicable, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions), Group II
(noncommunicable diseases); and Group III (injuries). The cause list has a hierarchical structure so that
different levels of aggregation are included. At each cause level, the list provides a set of mutually
exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories.

1.3 Other analysis categories

Estimates are made for 183 WHO Member States with populations greater than 90,000 in 2019. The 11
Member States excluded are: Andorra, Cook Islands, Dominica, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Nauru, Niue,
Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, San Marino, and Tuvalu. Additionally, estimates are made for the three
largest populations in non-Member State territories: Puerto Rico; Taiwan, China; West Bank and Gaza
Strip. These are not released at country level, but are included in the relevant regional and global totals.
Estimates are disaggregated by sex and age for the following age groups: neonatal (<28 days), 1-59
months, 5-14, 15-29, 30-49, 50-69, 70 years and older.
YLL, YLD and DALY estimates are available on the WHO website for years 2000, 2010, 2015 and -2019 for
countries and for a number of regional groupings as defined in Annex B to Technical Paper 2020.3 (WHO
2018).

1.4 What is new in this update for years 2000-2019

These WHO GHE provide a comprehensive and comparable set of DALY estimates from year 2000
onwards, consistent with and incorporating estimates for the WHO all-cause mortality and cause of deaths
in the same GHE update, as well as GBD 2019 analyses for YLDs, with some revisions and methodological
differences as summarized below:
o A simpler form of DALY, used by the GBD 2010 study (Murray et al, 2012b), has been adopted.
This form is easier to explain and use (see Section 2). Age-weighting and time discounting are
dropped, and the YLDs are calculated from prevalence estimates rather than incidence
estimates. YLDs are also adjusted for independent comorbidity.

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 o The standard life table used for calculation of years of life lost for a death at a given age is based
on the projected frontier life expectancy for 2050, with a life expectancy at birth of 90 years (see
Section 2.2)
o The years of life lost from mortality (YLLs) are calculated using WHO estimates of deaths by
region, cause, age and sex for years 2000-2019 being released in the same GHE update(WHO
2018).
o Estimates of YLD draw on the GBD 2019 analyses (GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators,
2020), with selected revisions to disability weights and prevalence estimates as noted below.
o Limited revisions have been made to disability weights for infertility, intellectual disability, vision
loss, hearing loss, dementia, drug use disorders, skin diseases and low back pain as previously
documented (WHO 2013b).
Because these estimates draw on new data and on the results of the GBD 2019 study, and there have
been substantial revisions to methods for many causes, these estimates for the years 2000-2019 are not
directly comparable with previous WHO estimates of DALYs.

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2 The disability-adjusted life year
The DALY is a summary measure which combines time lost through premature death and time lived in
states of less than optimal health, loosely referred to as “disability”. The DALY is a generalization of
the well-known Potential Years of Life Lost measure (PYLLs) to include lost good health. One DALY can be
thought of as one lost year of ‘healthy’ life and the measured disease burden is the gap between
a population’s health status and that of a normative reference population. DALYs for a specific cause
are calculated as the sum of the YLLs from that cause and the YLDs for people living in states of less than
good health resulting from the specific cause:
DALY(c,s,a,t) = YLL(c,s,a,t) + YLD(c,s,a,t) for given cause c, age a, sex s and year t

The YLLs for a cause are essentially calculated as the number of cause-specific deaths multiplied by a
loss function specifying the years lost for deaths as a function of the age at which death occurs. The
basic formula for YLLs is the following for a given cause c, age a, sex s and year t:

YLL(c,s,a,t) = N(c,s,a,t) x L(s,a)

where:
N(c,s,a,t) is the number of deaths due to the cause c for the given age a and sex s in year t
L(s,a) is a standard loss function specifying years of life lost for a death at age a for sex s
The GBD 1990 study chose not to use an arbitrary age cut-off such as 70 years for the loss function used
in the calculation of YLLs, but rather specified the loss function in terms of the life expectancies at
various ages in standard life tables with life expectancy at birth fixed at 82.5 years for females and 80.0
years for males. These represented approximately the highest observed life expectancies for females in
the mid- 1990s, together with an assumed biologically-determined minimum male-female difference.
The GBD 1990 and subsequent WHO updates used an incidence perspective for the calculation of YLDs.
To estimate YLDs for a particular cause in a particular time period, the number of incident cases in that
period is multiplied by the average duration of the disease and a weight factor that reflects the severity
of the disease on a scale from 0 (perfect health) to 1 (dead):

YLD(c,s,a,t) = I(c,s,a,t) x DW(c,s,a) x L(c,s,a,t)

where:
I(c,s,a,t) = number of incident cases for cause c, age a and sex s
DW(c,s,a) = disability weight for cause c, age a and sex s
L(c,s,a,t) = average duration of the case until remission or death (years)

The ‘valuation’ of time lived in non-fatal health states formalises and quantifies the loss of health
for different states of health as disability weights.
In the standard DALYs reported by the original GBD study and in subsequent WHO updates, calculations
of YLDs and YLLs used an additional 3% time discounting and non-uniform age weights that give less
weight to years lost at young and older ages (Murray, 1996). Using discounting and age weights, a death
in infancy corresponds to 33 DALYs, and deaths at ages 5–20 years to around 36 DALYs.

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2.1 Simplified DALY
Following the publication of the GBD 1990, there has been extensive debate on all the key value choices
incorporated into the DALY – the years lost on death, the disability weights, age weights and time
discounting (Anand & Hanson, 1997; Williams, 1999; Murray et al, 2002; Lyttkens, 2003; Arnesen &
Kapiriri, 2004; Bognar, 2008). Additionally, the incidence-based perspective required substantial
modelling of incidence and average durations for many diseases where the available data mainly
related to prevalence. The GBD 2010 study held a consultation in July 2011 with 21 philosophers,
ethicists, and economists to advise on the value choices that should be incorporated into the DALY
summary measure used for the GBD 2010. An earlier expert consultation in 2008 addressed the
conceptual, ethical and measurement issues in undertaking a comprehensive revision of disability
weights (Salomon, 2008).
Following these consultations, the GBD 2010 and subsequent studies chose to simplify the calculation of
DALYs (Murray et al, 2012b; Murray et al, 2012c) as follows:
 Use of a new normative standard life table for the loss function used to compute YLLs;
 Calculation of YLDs simply as the prevalence of each sequela multiplied by the relevant disability
weight
 Adjustment for comorbidity in the calculation of YLDs
 No discounting for time or unequal age weights
Following informal consultations with relevant WHO programs, collaborators and expert advisory groups
in late 2012, WHO decided to adopt the simplified calculation methods for DALYs as described in more
detail in the following sections, albeit with an updated loss function for the computation of YLLs.
2.2 Standard expected years of life lost for calculation of YLLs
The standard reference life table for the GBD 1990 was based on the highest observed life expectancy at
the time, Japanese females with a life expectancy at birth close to 82.5 years. Based on the observed
male- female gap in life expectancy in the best-off communities within high-income countries, the
standard reference life expectancy was set to 80·0 years at birth for males. The standard reference life
table is intended to represent the potential maximum life span of an individual in good health at a given
age. For the GBD 2010 study, it was decided to use the same reference standard for males and females
and to use a life table based on the lowest observed death rate for each age group in countries of more
than 5 million in population. The new GBD 2010 reference life table has a life expectancy at birth of 86·0
years for males and females.
However, some of the experts consulted by WHO argued that it was not appropriate to set the
normative loss of years of life in terms of currently observed death rates, since even for the lowest
observed death rates there are a proportion of deaths which are preventable or avertable. In fact,
Japanese females have already exceeded the GBD 2010 reference life expectancy at birth, with a life
expectancy at birth in 2013 of 87.1 years. Since the loss function is intended to represent the maximum
life span of an individual in good health, who is not exposed to avoidable health risks, or severe injuries,
and receives appropriate health services, we chose to base this on the frontier national life expectancy
derived from the lowest projected age-specific mortality rates for the year 2045-2050 by the World
Population Prospects 2019 (UN Population Division, 2019).
The highest projected life expectancies for the year 2050 are projected to be achieved with a life
expectancy at birth of 90 years. While this may still not represent the ultimate achievable human life
spans, it does represent a set of life spans which are thought likely to be achieved by a substantial

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number

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of people who are alive today (Kontis et al 2017). Table 2.1 summarizes the loss function used for the
calculation of YLLs in the WHO GHE.

Table 2.1 Standard loss functions used in Global Burden of Disease studies and for
WHO Global Health Estimates
GBD 1990 age- GBD 1990 no age- GBD WHO
weighted, discounted weights or discounting 2010 GHE
Age range Male Female Male Female Persons Persons
Neonatal 33.27 33.38 79.94 82.43 86.01 89.99
Post neonatal 34.22 34.34 78.85 81.36 85.68 89.55
1-4 35.17 35.29 77.77 80.28 83.63 87.07
5-9 37.22 37.36 72.89 75.47 78.76 82.58
10-14 37.31 37.47 67.91 70.51 73.79 77.58
15-19 36.02 36.22 62.93 65.55 68.83 72.60
20-24 33.84 34.08 57.95 60.63 63.88 67.62
25-29 31.11 31.39 52.99 55.72 58.94 62.66
30-34 28.08 28.40 48.04 50.83 54.00 57.71
35-39 24.91 25.30 43.10 45.96 49.09 52.76
40-44 21.74 22.19 38.20 41.13 44.23 47.83
45-49 18.63 19.16 33.38 36.36 39.43 42.94
50-54 15.65 16.26 28.66 31.68 34.72 38.10
55-59 12.82 13.52 24.07 27.10 30.10 33.33
60-64 10.19 10.96 19.65 22.64 25.55 28.66
65-69 7.80 8.60 15.54 18.32 21.12 24.12
70-74 5.71 6.45 11.87 14.24 16.78 19.76
75-79 4.00 4.59 8.81 10.59 12.85 15.65
80-84 2.68 3.09 6.34 7.56 9.34 11.96
85+ 1.37 1.23 3.82 3.59 5.05 7.05

2.3 Age weighting and time discounting

The GBD 1990 study and subsequent WHO updates published DALYs computed with a 3% discount rate
for future lost years of healthy life and an alternative set with a 0% discount rate. The arguments for
discounting future health were couched mainly in terms of avoiding various decision-making paradoxes
when future costs of health interventions are discounted (Murray & Acharya, 2002). Critics have argued
that there is no intrinsic reason to value a year of health as less important simply because it is in the
future (Tsuchiya, 2002) and the experts consulted for the GBD 2010 study also advised against
discounting, particularly in the context where the DALY has been more explicitly defined as quantifying
loss of health, rather than the social value of loss of health. This also avoids the inconsistency in the
original DALY method, where the start time for discounting future stream of YLDs was the year of
incidence, whereas that for YLLs was the year of death.
The original GBD 1990 study and subsequent WHO updates also incorporated age-weighting in the
standard DALYs used in most publications and analyses. The standard age weights gave less weight to
years of healthy life lost at young ages and older ages (Murray, 1996). With the clearer
conceptualization of DALYs as purely a measure of population health loss rather than broader aspects of
social welfare, it is difficult to justify the inclusion of age weights, and the GBD 2010 study dropped
them (Murray et al,

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2012b; Jamison et al, 2006b) has argued for an alternate form of age-weighting, for incorporating
stillbirths and deaths around the time of birth into the DALY. This modifies the loss function for years of
life lost for a death at a given age (or gestational age) to reflect “acquired life potential”, by which the
fetus or infant only gradually acquires the full life potential reflected in the standard loss function.
Murray et al (2012c) have argued that such considerations should be reflected in social priorities rather
than in the basic health measure itself.
Following informal consultations in 2012, WHO decided to adopt the same approach as GBD 2010 in
computing DALYs with a time discount rate of 0% and no age-weighting. This change results in a
substantial increase in the absolute number of DALYs lost and a relative increase in the share of DALYs at
younger and older ages (WHO 2018).

2.4 Prevalence versus incidence YLDs

DALYs were calculated in the GBD 1990 and subsequent WHO updates using an incidence perspective
for YLDs. Incident YLDs were computed as the stream of future health loss associated with disease
sequelae incident in the reference year. This was done to ensure consistency with the YLL calculation,
which takes an inherently incidence perspective, although prevalence-based YLDs were also calculated
for other purposes, such as the calculation of period healthy life expectancy.
The incidence-based YLD approach has three major disadvantages. First, it will not reflect the current
prevalent burden of disabling sequelae for a condition for which incidence has been substantially
reduced. Secondly, the YLD calculation requires estimates of both incidence and average duration of
disease sequelae, whereas for many health conditions it is primarily prevalence data that are collected.
Third, in an incidence perspective, all YLDs for a condition are assigned to the age-groups at which the
condition is incident, whereas the policy-maker is often more interested in the ages at which the loss of
health is experienced. Finally, incorporation of comorbidity is more straightforward in a prevalence
approach than an incidence approach.
Given these advantages of a prevalence approach, both the GBD 2010 and WHO have decided to switch
to a prevalence-based approach to calculation of YLDs. The major impact of this is to shift the age
distribution of YLDs significantly (Figure 2.1). Thus for example YLDs for congenital hearing loss will be
spread relatively evenly across all age groups in the prevalence perspective, whereas they will all fall at
age 0 in an incidence perspective.

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 x.
Figure 2.1 Age distribution of global YLD for the year 2004 (WHO 2008). Classic YLD are
incidence-based with age-weighting and 3% time discounting; incidence and prevalence
YLD are not age-weighted or discounted.

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2.5 Comorbidity adjustment
Earlier versions of the GBD reported YLDs calculated separately for individual disease and injury causes
without adjustment for comorbidity. These were added across causes to obtain total all-cause YLDs.
Some limited adjustments for comorbidity were incorporated into subsequent WHO updates. For
example, prevalence estimates for depression, substance use disorders and anxiety disorders were
adjusted to take into account quite substantial levels of comorbidity between these conditions, so that
double or triple counting did not occur for DALYs for these individuals. More comprehensive
adjustments for comorbidity across all conditions was required for the calculation of healthy life
expectancy. The first WHO estimates for HALE adjusted for YLD comorbidity assuming independence of
conditions (the probability of having two comorbid conditions is the product of the individual
probabilities of the two conditions). Later, a method for taking dependent comorbidity into account was
applied (Mathers, Iburg & Begg, 2006).
Because many people have more than one disease or injury, particularly at older ages, addition of YLDs
across causes may result in overestimation of the total loss of health. This is particularly important at the
oldest ages, where summed YLDs may approach or exceed 100% of person-years. Following expert
consultations, the GBD 2010 and subsequent revisions implemented adjustments for independent
comorbidity so that summed YLDs across causes reflect the sum of the overall lost health at the
individual. Individuals with the same functional health loss are then treated as like regardless of whether
that functional health loss came from one or several contributing conditions.
The GBD 2010 study estimated comorbidities using the assumption of independence within age-sex
groups:

p1+2 = p1 + p2 – p1 x p2 = 1 – (1 – p1) x (1 – p2) (1)

where p1+2 is the prevalence of the two comorbid diseases 1 and 2, p1 is the prevalence of disease 1 and
p2 the prevalence of disease 2.
It tested this assumption using UW Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data and concluded that the error
in magnitude of YLDs from using the independence assumption was minimal. The combined disability
weight for individuals with multiple conditions is estimated assuming a multiplicative model as follows:

DW1+2 = 1 – (1 – DW1) x (1 – DW2)

Since prevalence YLDs are calculated for each individual cause as:

YLDi = DWi x pi (2)

the two preceding equations can be combined into a single calculation resulting in:
YLD1+2 = 1 – (1-YLD1) x (1 – YLD2) (3)

Using the GBD 2004 estimates for non-age-weighted, undiscounted YLDs as an example, adjustment for
independent comorbidity reduces global all-age YLDs by 6% and YLDs for ages 60 and over by 11%.

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3 Disability weights for calculation of YLDs
3.1 Evolution of methods for estimation of disability weights
In order to use time as a common currency for non-fatal health states and for years of life lost due to
mortality, we must define, measure and numerically value time lived in non-fatal health states. While
death is not difficult to define, non-fatal health states are. They involve multiple domains of health
which relate to different functions, capacities or aspects of living. In the GBD studies, the numerical
valuation of time lived in non-fatal health states is through the so-called disability weights, which
quantify loss of functioning on a scale where 1 represents perfect health and 0 represents a state
equivalent to death. Depending on how these weights are derived and what they are attempting to
quantify, they are variously referred to as disability weights, quality-adjusted life year (QALY) weights,
health state valuations, utilities or health state preferences.
In the earliest version of the GBD 1990 study, the burden of disease was defined as loss of
welfare/subjective well-being/quality of life (World Bank, 1993). Murray (1996) subsequently argued
that the health state values should reflect societal judgements of the value of averting different diseases
rather than individual judgments of the disutility of the diseases. As a result, the 1996 version of the
GBD 1990 used two forms of the person-trade-off (PTO) method to assess social preferences for health
states and asked small groups of health professionals in weighting exercises to make a composite
judgment on the severity distribution of the condition and the social preference for time spent in each
severity level (Murray, 1996). Dutch researchers subsequently used the same methods to estimate
disability weights for the Netherlands (Stouthard et al, 1997; Stouthard, Essink-Bot & Bonsel, 2000). The
version of PTO used by the GBD study was criticized as unethical by a number of commentators
(Arnesen & Nord, 1999) and rejected for the same reason by project participants in a European multi-
country study following on from the Dutch study (Schwarzinger et al, 2003). Other criticism of the GBD
1990 approach to valuation of health states related to the use of judgements from health professionals
rather than the general population, or those with the conditions, and to the use of universal weights
rather than weights that varied with social and cultural environment.
During the period 2000-2008 in which WHO was carrying out updates of the GBD using the original
disability weights, with some revisions and additions (Mathers, Lopez & Murray, 2006), the conceptual
thinking behind the GBD made explicit the aspiration to quantify loss of health, rather than the social
value of the loss of health, or of wellbeing (Murray & Acharya, 2002; Salomon et al, 2003). In this
conceptualization, health state valuations formalize the intuitive notions that health levels lie on a
continuum and that we may characterize an individual as being more or less healthy than another at a
particular moment in time. Health state valuations quantify departures from perfect health, i.e., the
reductions in health associated with particular health states. Thus in the GBD terminology, the term
disability is used broadly to refer to departures from optimal health in any of the important domains of
health and disability weights should reflect the general population judgments about the ‘healthfulness’ of
defined states, not any judgments of quality of life or the worth of persons or the social undesirability or
stigma of health states.

3.2 Disability weights revisions for GBD 2016 and GHE 2016
The GBD 2010 study undertook a comprehensive re-estimation of disability weights through a large-
scale empirical investigation with a major emphasis on surveying respondents from the general
population, in which judgments about health losses associated with many causes of disease and injury
were elicited through a new standardized approach. The GBD 2010 study estimated disability weights
for 220 health states using a method involving discrete choice comparisons of “health” for pairs

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of health states

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described using lay descriptions consisting of a brief summary of the health state of an average or modal
case in 30 words or less (see Salomon et al 2012 for details of lay descriptions, survey and statistical
methods). Paired comparisons data were collected from 13,902 individuals in household surveys in five
countries, supplemented by an open-access web-based survey of 16,328 people. This study represents
the most extensive empirical effort to date to measure disability weights. Salomon et al (2012) also
concluded that they found strong evidence of highly consistent results across the samples from different
cultural environments.
In the GBD 2010 disability weights paper, Salomon et al (2012a). note that the new disability weights are
much higher for some health states (such as heroin addiction, acute low back pain) and much lower for a
larger number of health states, including infertility (0.01, previously 0.18), moderate to profound
hearing loss (0.02-0.03, previously 0.12-0.33), blindness (0.20, previously 0.60) and intellectual disability
(for severe intellectual disability 0.126, previously 0.82). Experts from the GBD Vision Loss Expert Group
noted the surprisingly low disability weights for severe vision disorders and suggested that the cause
was inadequate descriptions of the consequences of vision disorders (Taylor et al, 2013).
Nord (2013) argued that these problems result from the explicit framing the discrete choice
comparisons of sequelae in terms of “who is healthier”. Even if blindness is significantly limits
functioning, blind people are – in everyday language – not ‘sick’ or ‘ill’. Given this, many respondents may
not have thought of blind people as being in poor health. Other states with which this semantic and
conceptual point may have led to unreasonably low weights are for example ‘deafness’ (dw = 0.03),
‘amputations of legs and two artificial legs’ (0.05) and ‘paralysed below the waist, moves about with a
wheelchair’ (0.05). Alternatively, it is also possible that the “lay descriptions of these health states” were
inadequate in some way.
WHO’s earlier estimates of DALYs for years 2000-2011 made adjustments were made to a number of
the GBD 2010 disability weights for permanent long-term disabilities as described in a previous Technical
Paper (WHO 2013b). IHME also recognized that there were problems with these weights, and a number
of others with implausible face validity, and carried out an additional valuation exercise using revised
health state descriptions (Salomon et al 2015).
Salomon et al (2015) carried out new web-based surveys in 2013 of 30,660 respondents in four
European countries (Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden). These surveys included 183 health
states; of which 30 were revised descriptions and 18 were for new health states. Health state
descriptions were revised for most of the health states revised by WHO for the previous GHE2013 YLD
estimates. In particular, descriptions were revised for spinal cord injury, hearing loss, and cognitive
impairments. Valuations were also obtained for new health state descriptions relating to five mild health
states for alcohol and drug dependence outcomes, which are now also used in the GHE 2016.
Annex Table D lists the health states and health state descriptions used in the GBD 2015 study (Salomon
et al 2015, GBD 2015 Disease and Injury Incidence and Prevalence Collaborators 2016). Annex Table E
tabulates the various revisions of GBD disability weights for 234 health states and lists the weights used
for the GHE 2019 and GBD 2019 estimates.

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4 YLD estimates for diseases and injuries
For most disease and injury causes, we have drawn on GBD 2019 estimates by country for the years
2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2019 (GBD 2019 Diseases and Injuries Collaborators, 2020). The GBD 2019
study computed YLD as the prevalence of a sequela multiplied by the disability weight for that sequela
without age weighting or discounting. The YLDs arising from a disease or injury are the sum of the YLDs
for each of the sequelae associated with that disease.
For most sequelae, the GBD 2019 study used a Bayesian meta-regression method, DisMod-MR 2.1,
designed to address key limitations in descriptive epidemiological data, including missing data,
inconsistency, and large methodological variation between data sources. For some disorders, natural
history models, back calculation from mortality rates, or other methods were used. YLDs by cause at
age, sex, country, and year levels were adjusted for comorbidity with simulation methods.
For selected impairments, WHO and other collaborators have estimated the overall prevalence of the
impairment (WHO 2013b). These “envelope” prevalences constrained the estimates for sequelae
related to that impairment to sum to estimates of the overall impairment prevalence. For example, nine
disorders have blindness as a sequela. The prevalence of all blindness sequelae was constrained to sum
to blindness prevalence.
The WHO GHE draws on the GBD 2019 analyses for YLDs with some caveats. Selected disability weights
are revised as described in Section 3 above. Other revisions for prevalence estimates, cause distributions
and severity distributions were carried out for vision loss, hearing loss, intellectual disability, infertility,
anaemia, back and neck pain, migraine, alcohol problem use, and skin diseases. These are documented
in the previous Technical Paper (WHO 2013b).
In 2007, WHO established the Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) to
estimate global and regional burdens of foodborne disease. Included among the parasitic foodborne
diseases analysed were cysticercosis, echinococcis, and food-borne trematodosis. In 2015, the FERG
published regional and global estimates of deaths and DALYs for these diseases for the year 2010 (WHO
2015, Torgerson et al 2015). The GBD2019 time series estimates of YLD for these three diseases were
scaled to match the underlying FERG estimates of deaths for 14 WHO sub-regions in 2010.

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4.2 Uncertainty in YLD estimates
The GBD 2016 study estimated 95% uncertainty ranges for YLD estimates. Global uncertainty ranges for
each cause category are summarized in the following Table, in terms of average relative uncertainty (all
ages, both sexes) calculated as 0.5*(upper bound – lower bound)/median value.

Table 4.1 Average global relative uncertainty (%) for YLD by cause. Source: GBD 2016.
Av. Av.
cause Cause name uncertainty cause Cause name uncertainty
(±%) (±%)
0 All Causes 30.0 820 Mentaldisorders 53.1
10 Group I 60.3 830 Depression 54.8
20 Infectious 57.4 831 Major depression 52.7
30 TB 74.5 832 Dysthymia 64.4
40 STDs 100.9 840 Bipolar disorder 59.3
50 Syphilis 90.0 850 Schizophrenia 47.8
60 Chlamydia 89.6 860 Alcohol abuse 58.5
70 Gonorrhoea 123.9 870 Drug abuse 69.5
80 Trichomoniasis 111.7 871 Opioid abuse 65.9
85 Genital herpes 108.5 872 Cocaine abuse 77.8
90 Other STDs 94.3 873 Amphetamine abuse 78.5
100 HIV/AIDS 96.7 874 Cannabis abuse 78.9
110 Diarrhoeal 41.1 875 Other drug abuse 66.2
120 Childhood-cluster 84.5 880 Anxiety disorders 51.3
130 Pertussis 55.3 890 Eating disorders 66.6
140 Diphtheria 124.2 900 Autism 47.1
150 Measles 113.3 910 Child behavioural 103.3
160 Tetanus 115.9 911 ADD 104.0
170 Meningitis 42.6 912 Conduct disorder 60.8
180 Encephalitis 38.0 920 ID 79.1
185 Hepatitis 84.6 930 Other mental 49.4
186 Acute hepatitis A 101.8 940 Neurological 93.6
190 Acute hepatitis B 84.1 950 Dementias 50.1
200 Acute hepatitis C 92.2 960 Parkinson disease 68.8
205 Acute hepatitis E 77.9 970 Epilepsy 90.7
210 Parasitic 87.6 980 Multiple sclerosis 52.5
220 Malaria 55.7 990 Migraine 105.6
230 Trypanosomiasis 241.5 1000 Other headache 180.2
240 Chagas disease 88.6 1010 Other neurological 69.0
250 Schistosomiasis 108.5 1020 Sense organ 53.7
260 Leishmaniasis 108.6 1030 Glaucoma 58.2
270 lymphatic filariasis 52.8 1040 Cataracts 52.1
280 Onchocerciasis 60.4 1050 Refractive errors 53.4

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Table 4.1 (continued) Average global relative uncertainty (%) for YLD by cause. Source: GBD 2016.

Av. Av.
uncertainty uncertainty
cause2015 Cause name (±%) cause2015 Cause name (±%)
285 Cysticercosis 98.0 1060 Macular degen 56.6
295 Echinococcosis 99.3 1070 Other vision loss 63.4
300 Dengue 125.5 1080 Other hearing loss 49.3
310 Trachoma 81.4 1090 Other sense 74.6
315 Yellow fever 156.2 1100 CVD 54.4
320 Rabies 152.7 1110 RHD 58.2
330 Worms 74.7 1120 HHD 79.1
340 Ascariasis 79.2 1130 IHD 56.1
350 Trichuriasis 76.7 1140 Stroke 37.5
360 Hookworm disease 72.5 1141 Ischameic stroke 37.5
362 Trematodes 99.3 1142 Haem stroke 37.5
365 Leprosy 67.5 1150 Inflammatory HD 67.8
370 Other infectious 81.0 1160 Other circulatory 78.9
380 Resp infections 58.6 1170 Chronic resp 41.3
390 LRI 54.6 1180 COPD 37.4
400 URI 58.5 1190 Asthma 50.4
410 Otitis media 68.6 1200 Other resp 50.3
420 Maternal 65.2 1210 Digestive diseases 64.6
490 Neonata 48.1 1220 Peptic ulcer disease 67.0
500 Preterm 38.2 1230 Cirrhosis 84.6
510 Birth asphyxia 87.9 1231 Cirrhosis hep B 91.9
520 Neonatal sepsis 81.4 1232 Cirrhosis heps C 91.8
530 Other neonatal 33.2 1233 Cirrhosis alcohol 90.7
540 Nutritional 81.9 1234 Other cirrhosis 87.6
550 PEM 70.1 1240 Appendicitis 69.6
560 Iodine deficiency 75.0 1241 Gastritis 69.6
570 Vit A deficiency 81.0 1242 Intestinal obstruction 54.8
580 ID anaemia 96.4 1244 Inflam. bowel 53.7
590 Other nutritional 71.6 1246 Gallbladder disease 62.9
600 Group II 56.7 1248 Pancreatitis 58.9
610 Cancers 70.8 1250 Other digestive 68.0
620 Oral cancers 62.8 1260 GU diseases 66.3
621 Lip and oral cavity 61.6 1270 Kidney diseases 68.6
622 Nasopharynx 63.8 1271 Acute glom. 74.4
623 Other pharynx 57.2 1272 CKD diabetes 86.4
630 Oesophagus ca 59.2 1273 Other CKD 67.5
640 Stomach cancer 54.9 1280 Prostatic hyperplasia 65.7
650 Colorectaql cancers 55.0 1290 Urolithiasis 72.9

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Table 4.1 (continued) Average global relative uncertainty (%) for YLD by cause. Source: GBD 2016.

Av. Av.
uncertainty uncertainty
cause2015 Cause name (±%) cause2015 Cause name (±%)
660 Liver cancer 76.4 1300 Other urinary 72.8
661 Liver cancer hep B 71.0 1310 Infertility 140.6
662 Liver cancer hep C 82.9 1320 Gynecological 46.1
663 Liver cancer alc 80.3 1330 Skin diseases 63.5
Musculoskeletal
664 Other liver cancer 81.8 1340 diseases 57.2
670 Pancreas cancer 54.1 1350 Rheumatoid arthritis 56.2
680 Lung cancers 60.4 1360 Osteoarthritis 77.3
690 Skin cancers 81.0 1370 Gout 71.4
691 Melanoma 82.3 1380 Back and neck pain 50.5
692 NMSC 57.1 1390 Other musc. 97.3
700 Breast cancer 64.1 1400 Congenital 63.1
710 Cervix cancer 66.9 1410 Neural tube defects 43.1
720 Uterus cancer 68.2 1420 CL/CP 70.1
730 Ovary cancer 76.5 1430 Down syndrome 52.5
740 Prostate cancer 57.2 1440 Congenital heart 79.2
742 Testicular cancer 122.1 1450 Other chromosomal 56.7
745 Kidney cancer 71.4 1460 Other congenital 63.7
750 Bladder cancer 58.2 1470 Oral conditions 64.7
751 Brain cancers 74.9 1480 Dental caries 84.2
752 Gallbladder cancer 57.2 1490 Periodontal disease 94.9
753 Larynx cancer 53.3 1500 Edentulism 55.1
754 Thyroid cancer 74.2 1502 Other oral disorders 46.6
755 Mesothelioma 98.9 1505 SIDS NA
760 Lymphomas MM 69.3 1510 Group III 41.6
761 Hodgkin lymphoma 73.0 1520 Unintentional 40.6
762 Non-H lymphoma 63.7 1530 Road injury 38.0
763 Multiple myeloma 70.7 1540 Poisonings 55.3
770 Leukaemia 68.9 1550 Falls 38.2
780 Other cancers 63.8 1560 Fire 50.3
790 Other neoplasms 80.9 1570 Drowning 37.4
800 Diabetes mellitus 49.0 1575 Mechanical 44.0
810 Endocrine blood 60.2 1580 Disasters 46.4
811 Thalassaemias 88.1 1590 Other unintentional 42.9
812 Sickle cell 90.7 1600 Intentional 40.3
813 Other haemo 96.2 1610 Suicide 36.9
814 Other endocrine 55.2 1620 Homicide 34.9
1630 Conflict 60.0

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For YLD, the following guidance by cause is provided in the downloadable YLD spreadsheets for
countries and regions:

Global average uncertainty range ≤25th percentile (6% to 30.7%)

Global average uncertainty range >25 th percentile and ≤50th percentile (30.8% to 35.4%)

Global average uncertainty range >50th percentile and ≤50th percentile (35.5% to 42.0%)

Global average uncertainty range >75th percentile (>42%)

For DALYs, color coded guidance on uncertainty is also provided in the downloadable DALY spreadsheets
for countries and regions. This color coding by country and cause combines information on the YLL
uncertainty (by country data type) and YLD uncertainty (by cause) as follows:

Global YLD/YLL <0.4 and multiple years of high-quality death registration data are
available.

Global YLD/YLL <0.4 and multiple years of moderate quality death registration data are
available, OR
Global YLD/YLL in range 0.4-2.4. Multiple years of high-quality death registration data
are available, or multiple years of moderate quality death registration data are available
and average YLD uncertainty less than 30.9%, OR
Global YLD/YLL > 2.4 and YLD uncertainty less than 30.9%.

Global YLD/YLL <0.4 and multiple years of low-quality death registration data are
available, OR
Global YLD/YLL in range 0.4-2.4. Multiple years of moderate quality death registration
data are available, or multiple years of low-quality death registration data are available.
and average YLD uncertainty less than 30.9%; OR
Global YLD/YLL > 2.4 and YLD uncertainty in range 30.9% to 35.5%.

Global YLD/YLL <0.4 and country is low HIV country without useable death registration
data, OR
Global YLD/YLL in range 0.4-2.4. Multiple years of low-quality death registration data are
available and average YLD uncertainty > 42.4%, or death registration data are not

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 available, country is low HIV country and average YLD uncertainty in range 35.5% to
42%, OR
Global YLD/YLL > 2.4 and YLD uncertainty in range 35.5% to 42%.

Global YLD/YLL <0.4 and country is high HIV country without useable death registration,
OR
Global YLD/YLL in range 0.4-2.4, country is low HIV country without useable death
registration data and average YLD uncertainty > 42%, or country is high HIV country
without useable death registration data; OR
Global YLD/YLL > 2.4 and YLD uncertainty > 42%.

5.5 Conclusions
WHO’s adoption of health estimates is affected by a number of factors, including a country consultation
process for country-level health estimates, existing multi-agency and expert group collaborative
mechanisms, and compliance with minimum standards around data transparency, data and methods
sharing. More detailed information on quality of data sources and methods, as well as estimated
uncertainty intervals, is provided in referenced sources for specific causes.
Calculated uncertainty ranges depend on the assumptions and methods used. In practice, estimating
uncertainty in a consistent way across health indicators has had limited success (i.e., estimates with
uncertainty typically reflect some, but not all, source of uncertainty). The type and complexity of models
used for global health estimates varies widely by research/institutional group and health estimate.
Where data are available and of high quality, estimates from different institutions are generally in
agreement. Discrepancies are more likely to arise for countries where data are poor and for conditions
where data are sparse and potentially biased. This is best addressed through improving the primary
data.
Although the GHE estimates for years 2000-2015 have large uncertainty ranges for some causes and
some regions, they provide useful information on broad relativities of disease burden, on the relative
importance of different causes of death and disability, and on regional patterns and inequalities. The
data gaps and limitations in high-mortality regions reinforces the need for caution when interpreting
global comparative burden of disease assessments and the need for increased investment in population
health measurement systems. The use of verbal autopsy methods in sample registration systems,
demographic surveillance systems and household surveys provides some information on causes of death
in populations without well-functioning death registration systems, but there remain considerable
challenges in the validation and interpretation of such data.

Page 21
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