Epidemiological studies report confidence or uncertainty intervals around their estimates. Estimates of the burden of diseases and risk factors are subject to a broader range of uncertainty because of the combination of multiple data sources and value choices. Sensitivity analysis can be used to...

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...

Background: Little is known about the long-term drug costs associated with treating AIDS in developing countries. Brazil's AIDS treatment program has been cited widely as the developing world's largest and most successful AIDS treatment program. The program guarantees free access to highly...

Background: In survey studies on health-state valuations, ordinal ranking exercises often are used as precursors to other elicitation methods such as the time trade-off (TTO) or standard gamble, but the ranking data have not been used in deriving cardinal valuations. This study reconsiders the...

Philip Clarke and colleagues examined patient-level data for over 11,000 participants with type 2 diabetes from 20 countries and find that major complications of diabetes significantly increased hospital use and costs across settings. Background: Diabetes imposes a substantial burden globally in...

The UNAIDS Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) was developed to aid in country-level estimation and short-term projection of HIV/AIDS epidemics. This paper describes advances reflected in the most recent update of this tool (EPP 2007), and identifies key issues that remain to be addressed in...

In an era when most societies are coping with greater demand for health resources, choices will have to be made about the provision of health services. Strategic health planning must take into account the comparative burden of diseases and injuries, and the risk factors that cause them, and how...

This volume is a single up-to-date source on the entire global epidemiology of diseases, injuries and risk factors with a comprehensive statement of methods and a complete presentation of results. It includes refined methods to assess data, ensure epidemiological consistency, and summarize the...