Ali H Mokdad
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, USA
Title: The global burden of disease, injuries, and risk factors in 195 countries; findings from the 2015 Global Burden of Disease, 1990-2015
Biography
Biography: Ali H Mokdad
Abstract
The Global Burden of Disease 2015 (GBD) is a systematic, scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss from all major diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and population. We quantified a complete set of health loss metrics with uncertainty for 195 countries and territories, 11 of which—Brazil, China, India, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States—were analyzed at the subnational level. In addition to the traditional health metrics such as disease and injury prevalence and incidence, death numbers and rates, GBD provides several metrics to report results on health loss related to specific diseases, injuries and risk factors: years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs), prevalence and prevalence rates for sequelae, years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). We also report our findings by the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), developed as a summary measure of overall development based on estimates of lag dependent income per capita (LDI), average educational attainment over age 15 years, and total fertility rate (TFR). Life expectancy increased from 61.7 years (95% uncertainty interval 61.2-62.2) in 1980 to 71.8 years (71.2-72.4) in 2015. However, for some countries, life expectancy did not improve or declined. Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) deaths, increased by 14.4% to 39.8 million deaths (38.5‒41.3 million) in 2015 while age-standardized rates decreased by 13.0% (9.7‒16.2%). By contrast, both total deaths and age-standardized death rates due to communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional conditions significantly declined between 2005 and 2015. From 1990 to 2015, four risks – unsafe sanitation, household air pollution, childhood underweight, and childhood stunting – saw a decrease of more than 30%; further, such reductions in risk exposure were similar among men and women. Our study showed that age-specific mortality has steadily improved over the last 35 years with progress made at a faster pace in the majority of countries with high SDI.