Lancet issue on the state of global health

The Lancet has devoted an entire issue to various aspects of global health. The issue is available free for download.

An edited extract from the executive summary follows:

The Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 (GBD 2010) is the largest ever systematic effort to describe the global distribution and causes of a wide array of major diseases, injuries, and health risk factors.

The results show that infectious diseases, maternal and child illness, and malnutrition now cause fewer deaths and less illness than they did twenty years ago. As a result, fewer children are dying every year, but more young and middle-aged adults are dying and suffering from disease and injury.

Thus non-communicable diseases, such as cancer and heart disease, become the dominant causes of death and disability worldwide.

Since 1970, men and women worldwide have gained slightly more than ten years of life expectancy overall, but they spend more years living with injury and illness.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *