Comparative quantification of health risks: global and regional burden of disease attributable to selected major risk factors

Overview

During the twentieth century reliable cause-specific mortality statistics became available for many countries, culminating in the Global Burden of Disease project which, during the 1990s, provided estimates for different regions of the world (with, obviously, varying degrees of reliability) of the numbers of deaths due to major diseases, and of the amounts of “disability-adjusted” loss of healthy life from those diseases. The present study goes further, and seeks to estimate the amounts of death and disability due to the main avoidable causes of those diseases. Its preliminary conclusions underlay the 250-page World Health Organization report on “Reducing Risks” (2002), the aim of which was to summarize, for the first time, the amount of death and disability in each of 14 subregions of the world that is attributable not to particular diseases, but to particular avoidable risk factors.