The 2013 Global Burden of Disease Study, published in The Lancet, examined chronic and acute disease and injury across 188 countries for 23 years taking place from 1990 to 2013.
The information below came from this study
- Assessed with the Years Lived with Disability (YLD), which measures the impact of health problems impairing mobility, hearing or vision, or those causing some kind of pain.
- More than 30% of those had more than five chronic or acute illnesses.
- Australians were among these. Low back pain and depression were the top two major health problems in Australia, in terms of their impact on people.
- The study found rates of disability are rising – people live longer but also experience more Illness and Disease.
- Just 1 in 20 is healthy
- The number of people in the entire study who suffered from 10 or more health problems increased by 52%
- And this is not just talking about the elderly, as 81% of those studied with more than 5 ailments were younger than 65 years old.
- Just 2 acute diseases – Upper Respiratory Tract Infections and Diarrhoeal Disease – caused more than 20 billion new cases of disease globally.
- In both 1990 and 2013, the leading cause of YLD in Australia’s women was a major Depressive Disorder
- The leading cause in men was Lower Back pain.
- Both health issues are among the Top 10 greatest contributors to Disability in every country in the study.
- Over the past 23 years, the leading causes of health loss around the world have hardly changed.
Australia’s Top 10:
The 10 leading causes of YLDs in Australia are
1. Lower Back pain
2. Major Depressive Disorder
3. Other Musculoskeletal Disorders
4. Neck pain
5. Migraine
6. Anxiety disorders
7. Lung Disease (COPD)
8. Asthma
9. Age-related and other hearing loss
10. Diabetes Mellitus
References:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00648-6/fulltext
https://www.thelancet.com/gbd
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrneph.2015.98
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214109X15000698