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The state of health in the European Union (EU-27) in 2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease study 2019.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Repository DOI


Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Santos, João Vasco 
Padron-Monedero, Alicia 
Bikbov, Boris 
Grad, Diana Alecsandra 
Plass, Dietrich 

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The European Union (EU) faces many health-related challenges. Burden of diseases information and the resulting trends over time are essential for health planning. This paper reports estimates of disease burden in the EU and individual 27 EU countries in 2019, and compares them with those in 2010. METHODS: We used the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study estimates and 95% uncertainty intervals for the whole EU and each country to evaluate age-standardised death, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs) and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) rates for Level 2 causes, as well as life expectancy and healthy life expectancy (HALE). RESULTS: In 2019, the age-standardised death and DALY rates in the EU were 465.8 deaths and 20,251.0 DALYs per 100,000 inhabitants, respectively. Between 2010 and 2019, there were significant decreases in age-standardised death and YLL rates across EU countries. However, YLD rates remained mainly unchanged. The largest decreases in age-standardised DALY rates were observed for "HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases" and "transport injuries" (each -19%). "Diabetes and kidney diseases" showed a significant increase for age-standardised DALY rates across the EU (3.5%). In addition, "mental disorders" showed an increasing age-standardised YLL rate (14.5%). CONCLUSIONS: There was a clear trend towards improvement in the overall health status of the EU but with differences between countries. EU health policymakers need to address the burden of diseases, paying specific attention to causes such as mental disorders. There are many opportunities for mutual learning among otherwise similar countries with different patterns of disease.

Description

Keywords

European Burden of Disease Network, European Union, Global Burden of Diseases, Health status, Population health, Humans, European Union, Global Burden of Disease, Life Expectancy, Disability-Adjusted Life Years, Male, Health Status, Female, Cost of Illness

Journal Title

BMC Public Health

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1471-2458
1471-2458

Volume Title

24

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC