Global Burden of Disease 2019 Analysis

GBD 2019 estimated each epidemiological quantity of interest—incidence, prevalence, mortality, years lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs)—for 23 age groups; males, females, and both sexes combined; and 204 countries and territories that were grouped into 21 regions and seven super-regions. For GBD 2019, nine countries and territories (Cook Islands, Monaco, San Marino, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Tokelau, and Tuvalu) were added, such that the GBD location hierarchy now includes all WHO member states. GBD 2019 includes subnational analyses for Italy, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Poland, and 16 countries previously estimated at subnational levels (Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, and the USA). All subnational analyses are at the first level of administrative organisation within each country except for New Zealand (by Māori ethnicity), Sweden (by Stockholm and non-Stockholm), the UK (by local government authorities), and the Philippines (by province). In this publication, we present subnational estimates for Brazil, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Sweden, the UK, and the USA; given space constraints, these results are presented in appendix 2. At the most detailed spatial resolution, we generated estimates for 990 locations. The GBD diseases and injuries analytical framework generated estimates for every year from 1990 to 2019.
Diseases and injuries were organised into a levelled cause hierarchy from the three broadest causes of death and disability at Level 1 to the most specific causes at Level 4. Within the three Level 1 causes—communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases; non-communicable diseases; and injuries—there are 22 Level 2 causes, 174 Level 3 causes, and 301 Level 4 causes (including 131 Level 3 causes that are not further disaggregated at Level 4; see appendix 1 sections 3.4 and 4.12 for the full list of causes). 364 total causes are non-fatal and 286 are fatal. For GBD 2019, 12 new causes were added to the modelling framework: pulmonary arterial hypertension, eye cancer, soft tissue and other extraosseous sarcomas, malignant neoplasm of bone and articular cartilage, and neuroblastoma and other peripheral nervous cell tumours at Level 3, and hepatoblastoma, Burkitt lymphoma, other non-Hodgkin lymphoma, retinoblastoma, other eye cancers, and two sites of osteoarthritis (hand and other joints) at Level 4.