Disability-adjusted Life Years (DALYs)

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Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) × Subscribe here to receive notifications whenever content on this page changes. Subscribe Already subscribed? To unsubscribe click here. × Short name: DALYs Data type: Statistic Topic: Mortality and burden of disease Rationale: Mortality does not give a complete picture of the burden of disease borne by individuals in different populations. 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 (YLLs) and years of life lost due to time lived in states of less than full health, or years of healthy life lost due to disability (YLDs). One DALY represents the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health. Using DALYs, the burden of diseases that cause premature death but little disability (such as drowning or measles) can be compared to that of diseases that do not cause death but do cause disability (such as cataract causing blindness). Definition:  One DALY represents the loss of the equivalent of one year of full health. DALYs for a disease or health condition are the sum of the years of life lost to due to premature mortality (YLLs) and the years lived with a disability (YLDs) due to prevalent cases of the disease or health condition in a population. Disaggregation: Age, Sex, Cause, Risk factors M&E Framework: Impact Method of estimation: DALYs for a specific cause are calculated as the sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs) from that cause and the years of years of healthy life lost due to disability (YLDs) for people living in states of less than good health resulting from the specific cause.   The YLLs for a cause are 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 loss function is based on the frontier national life expectancy projected for the year 2050 by the World Population Prospects 2012 (UN Population Division, 2013), with a life expectancy at birth of 92 years.   Prevalence YLDs are used here. Prevalence YLDs are calculated as the prevalence of each non-fatal condition multiplied by its disability weight.      Contact person email: healthstat@who.int Name: healthstat@who.int Links: WHO methods and data sources for global burden of disease estimates 2000-2019 || https://cdn.who.int/media/docs/default-source/gho-documents/global-health-estimates/ghe2019_daly-methods.pdf?sfvrsn=31b25009_7 If you have any feedback, you are welcome to write it here. If you need to access the old Global Health Observatory data, you can do it here. But before you leave, please provide us your feedback about our new data portal. ×

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