World Health Organization

About: World Health Organization is a government organization based out in Islamabad, Pakistan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Public health. The organization has 13330 authors who have published 22232 publications receiving 1322023 citations. The organization is also known as: World Health Organisation & WHO.

Global Burden of Disease

Abstract: Reliable, comparable information about the main causes of disease and injury in populations, and how these are changing, is a critical input for debates about priorities in the health sector. Traditional sources of information about the descriptive epidemiology of diseases, injuries, and risk factors are generally incomplete, fragmented, and of uncertain reliability and comparability. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study has provided a conceptual and methodological framework to quantify and compare the health of populations using a summary measure of both mortality and disability, the disability-adjusted life year (DALY). This article describes key features of the Global Burden of Disease analytic approach, the evolution of the GBD starting from the first study for the year 1990, and summarizes the methodological improvements incorporated into GBD revisions carried out by the World Health Organization. It also reviews controversies and criticisms, and examines priorities and issues for future GBD updates.

Global Estimates for Prevalence of Diabetes Mellitus and Impaired Glucose Tolerance in Adults

Abstract: Objective— To assemble standardized estimates of abnormal glucose tolerance in adults in diverse communities worldwide and provide guidelines for the derivation of comparable estimates in future epidemiological studies. Research Design and Methods— The project was limited to population-based investigations that had used current WHO criteria for diagnosis and classification of abnormal glucose tolerance. Raw data were obtained by WHO from surveys conducted during 1976–1991 of over 150,000 persons from 75 communities in 32 countries. Data within the truncated age range of 30–64 yr were adjusted to the standard world population of Segi. Age-specific prevalences also are reported for selected populations. Results— Within the chosen age range, diabetes was absent or rare ( 50% were previously undiagnosed. In both Chinese and Indian migrant populations, relative prevalence was high when compared with indigenous communities. Conclusions— Diabetes in adults is now a global health problem, and populations of developing countries, minority groups, and disadvantaged communities in industrialized countries now face the greatest risk.

Analyzing Health Equity Using Household Survey Data: A Guide to Techniques and their Implementation

Abstract: This book shows how to implement a variety of analytic tools that allow health equity - along different dimensions and in different spheres - to be quantified. Questions that the techniques can help provide answers for include the following: Have gaps in health outcomes between the poor and the better-off grown in specific countries or in the developing world as a whole? Are they larger in one country than in another? Are health sector subsidies more equally distributed in some countries than in others? Is health care utilization equitably distributed in the sense that people in equal need receive similar amounts of health care irrespective of their income? Are health care payments more progressive in one health care financing system than in another? What are catastrophic payments? How can they be measured? How far do health care payments impoverish households? This volume has a simple aim: to provide researchers and analysts with a step-by-step practical guide to the measurement of a variety of aspects of health equity. Each chapter includes worked examples and computer code. The authors hope that these guides, and the easy-to-implement computer routines contained in them, will stimulate yet more analysis in the field of health equity, especially in developing countries. They hope this, in turn, will lead to more comprehensive monitoring of trends in health equity, a better understanding of the causes of these inequities, more extensive evaluation of the impacts of development programs on health equity, and more effective policies and programs to reduce inequities in the health sector.

The relationship of average volume of alcohol consumption and patterns of drinking to burden of disease: an overview.

Abstract: Aims As part of a larger study to estimate the global burden of disease attributable to alcohol: • to quantify the relationships between average volume of alcohol consumption, patterns of drinking and disease and injury outcomes, and • to combine exposure and risk estimates to determine regional and global alcohol-attributable fractions (AAFs) for major disease and injury categories. Design, methods, setting Systematic literature reviews were used to select diseases related to alcohol consumption. Meta-analyses of the relationship between alcohol consumption and disease and multi-level analyses of aggregate data to fill alcohol–disease relationships not currently covered by individual-level data were used to determine the risk relationships between alcohol and disease. AAFs were estimated as a function of prevalence of exposure and relative risk, or from combining the aggregate multi-level analyses with prevalence data. Findings Average volume of alcohol consumption was found to increase risk for the following major chronic diseases: mouth and oropharyngeal cancer; oesophageal cancer; liver cancer; breast cancer; unipolar major depression; epilepsy; alcohol use disorders; hypertensive disease; hemorrhagic stroke; and cirrhosis of the liver. Coronary heart disease (CHD), unintentional and intentional injuries were found to depend on patterns of drinking in addition to average volume of alcohol consumption. Most effects of alcohol on disease were detrimental, but for certain patterns of drinking, a beneficial influence on CHD, stroke and diabetes mellitus was observed. Conclusions Alcohol is related to many major disease outcomes, mainly in a detrimental fashion. While average volume of consumption was related to all disease and injury categories under consideration, pattern of drinking was found to be an additional influencing factor for CHD and injury. The influence of patterns of drinking may be underestimated because pattern measures have not been included in many epidemiologic studies. Generalizability of the results is limited by methodological problems of the underlying studies used in the present analyses. Future studies need to address these methodological issues in order to obtain more accurate risk estimates.