EVALUATION OF IMPACT OF VARIOUS DISEASES ON MORTALITY

  • 1 January 1975
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 52  (3) , 369-375
Abstract
The scarcity of resources within the health sector creates serious allocation problems. Assuming that it were legitimate to allocate the available means to the various diseases according to their impact on the length of human life, how this impact should be evaluated was considered. Methods for measuring the importance of various diseases from the viewpoint of their lethal effects and significance for life expectancy were compared and evaluated. Three evaluation methods used: the percentage of all deaths due to the disease (method A); the gain in life expectancy that would occur if the disease were eradicated as a cause of death (method B); and the change in the ratio between productive and nonproductive groups that would result from eliminating the disease as a cause of death (method C). The analyses are based on the total number of deaths in Denmark in 1969 and 1971. According to (A), 1/3 of all deaths was caused by heart diseases, 1/4 by cancer and 1/10 by stroke. The results of method (B) were in agreement with those of method (A); the greatest gain in life expectancy was obtained by eliminating cardiac diseases; cancer ranked 2nd and accidents 3rd for men and 4th for women. Method (C) yielded contrasting results. The result of eliminating most diseases would be a decrease in the proportion of persons of productive age. This was most distinct for cardiac diseases. The most important exception to this rule was accidents: if these were eliminated, the distribution of the population in the productive and nonproductive age groups would remain stable.

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