Developing health indicators

Most assessments of the relative importance of different diseases are based on how many deaths they cause. This convention has certain merits: death is an unambiguous event, and the statistical systems of many countries routinely produce the data required. There are, however, many diseases or conditions that are not fatal but that are responsible for great loss of healthy life: examples are chronic depression and paralysis caused by polio. The "Disability-Adjusted Life Year" (DALY) is a unit developed jointly by the World Bank and WHO for measuring both the global burden of disease and the effectiveness of health interventions, as indicated by reduction in the disease burden. It is calculated as the present value of the future years of disability-free life that are lost as the result of the premature deaths or cases of disability occurring in a particular year.