Charline Maertens de Noordhout

Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE)

The NEED (Needs Examination, Evaluation and Dissemination) assessment framework was developed to identify and measure health-related patient and societal unmet needs across different health conditions, supporting the creation of needs-driven healthcare policy and innovation. It includes 25 criteria of needs and 46 related indicators allowing to est...

In this systematic review with meta-analysis, the efficacy, effectiveness, and safety of the new GSK recombinant zoster vaccine (RZV) were assessed. Twenty three publications reporting on 14 studies were selected, including 2 pivotal RCTs in older immunocompetent adults (ZOE-50 and ZOE-70), 4 RCTs on immunocompromised patients (haematopoietic stem...

Introduction: After contracting COVID-19, many people have continued to experience various symptoms for several weeks and months, even after a mild acute phase. These people with ‘long COVID’ faced difficulties when confronted with the healthcare system. Purpose of research: In order to better understand their experience, we supplemented the inf...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to an increasing number of patients with ‘long COVID’. Long COVID is the persistence of symptoms for weeks or months after an infection by SARS-CoV-2. It often impacts on the professional life of affected people. Aims The aim of this study is to understand the experiences and needs of people with lon...

Background Intensive care unit (ICU) nurses are at an increased risk of burnout and may have an intention-to-leave their jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic may increase this risk. Objective The objective of this study was to describe the prevalence of burnout risk and intention-to-leave the job and nursing profession among ICU nurses and to analyse the r...

Introduction After COVID-19, many people continue to experience various symptoms for several weeks, even after a mild acute phase, and encounter difficulties when confronted with the healthcare system. Patient associations asked the Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre to investigate the needs of these patients to improve their management. Purpose...

Background After almost 2 years of fighting against SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the number of patients enduring persistent symptoms long after acute infection is a matter of concern. This set of symptoms was referred to as “long COVID”, and it was defined more recently as “Post COVID-19 condition” by the World health Organization (WHO). Although studies h...

Every four to five years, the Federal Knowledge Center for Healthcare (KCE) publishes a scorecard on the performance of the Belgian healthcare system. This is an important exercise for the orientation of our health care policy, as it allows us to identify certain weaknesses and thus determine which actions should be taken as a matter of priority. I...

Long Covid: what is already known about this new condition? Long COVID affects people who have experienced a severe form of COVID-19, as well as patients who suffered a mild form. Six months after infection with the coronavirus, at least 1 out of 7 patients still have symptoms. These symptoms are very diverse and are probably related to a combinati...

The Health Systems in Transition (HiT) profiles edited by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies are detailed descriptions of health systems and of policy initiatives in progress in each member’s country. The Belgian report is done in collaboration with the KCE and Sciensano. In order to facilitate cross-country comparisons, these...

How equitable and universal is the Belgian health insurance? Accessibility to and delivery of effective, high-quality and affordable healthcare are fundamental objectives that have shaped health policy and the universal healthcare coverage in Belgium. To what extent are access to and financing of healthcare in Belgium equitable? In general, the use...

Since the discovery of penicillin in 1928 and more precisely since its availability for medical use in the 1940s, the use of antibiotics has made major contributions to public health. Many of the improvements in mortality and morbidity that modern medicine has secured are for the greater part based on the ability to prevent and cure infections. The...

Currently, separate measures are used to estimate the impact of animal diseases on mortality and animal welfare. This article introduces a novel metric, the Welfare-Adjusted Life Year (WALY), to estimate disease impact by combining welfare compromise and premature death components. Adapting the Disability-Adjusted Life Year approach used in human h...

Demographics of participants who completed questionnaires for IWW generation. (XLSX)

Impaired welfare weight results elicited by the six loess regression models in the study. (XLSX)

Lay descriptions and welfare compromises classified by Five Domain of 35 welfare impediments. (DOCX)

A version of the questionnaire for eliciting impaired welfare weight. (PPTX)

An excerpt of the paired comparison dataset. (XLSX)

Years lived with impaired welfare, years of life lost, and welfare-adjusted life year results using impaired welfare weights elicited by each of the six loess regression models. (XLSX)

Background: Despite increasing of the Belgian health expenditures, several indicators related to population health showed poor results. The objectives of this study were to perform an in-depth analysis of the secular trend of Belgian health status using the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2016 study results for Belgium, and to compare these results...

Background: Utilities and disability weights (DWs) are metrics used for calculating Quality-Adjusted Life Years and Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), respectively. Utilities can be obtained with multi-attribute instruments such as the EuroQol 5 dimensions questionnaire (EQ-5D). In 2010 and 2013, Salomon et al. proposed a set of DWs for 220 a...

Background Since the 1990s, Belgian health expenditures have increased because of health policies and demographic changes. In 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked Belgium number five in health spending in Europe. The same year, the Belgian government started a reform of health care funding. The objectives of this s...

Background: In 2015, new disability weights (DWs) for infectious diseases were constructed based on data from four European countries. In this paper, we evaluated if country, age, sex, disease experience status, income and educational levels have an impact on these DWs. Methods: We analyzed paired comparison responses of the European DW study by...

Salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis and listeriosis are food-borne diseases. We estimated and forecasted the number of cases of these three diseases in Belgium from 2012 to 2020, and calculated the corresponding number of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). The salmonellosis time series was fitted with a Bai and Perron two-breakpoint model, while...

Background: Listeriosis is a rare disease caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes and mainly affects at risk people. Listeriosis can lead to sepsis, central nervous system (CNS) infections and death. The objectives of this study were to describe and quantify comorbidities and neurological sequelae underlying non-perinatal listeriosis cases...

Background: The Foodborne Disease Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) was established in 2007 by the World Health Organization to estimate the global burden of foodborne diseases (FBDs). This paper describes the methodological framework developed by FERG's Computational Task Force to transform epidemiological information into FBD burden est...

Background: The World Health Organization (WHO) initiative to estimate the global burden of foodborne diseases established the Foodborne Diseases Burden Epidemiology Reference Group (FERG) in 2007. In addition to global and regional estimates, the initiative sought to promote actions at a national level. This involved capacity building through nat...

Background: In calculations of burden of disease using disability-adjusted life years, disability weights are needed to quantify health losses relating to non-fatal outcomes, expressed as years lived with disability. In 2012 a new set of global disability weights was published for the Global Burden of Disease 2010 (GBD 2010) study. That study sugg...

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study assesses health losses from diseases, injuries, and risk factors using disability-adjusted life-years, which need a set of disability weights to quantify health levels associated with non-fatal outcomes. The objective of this study was to estimate disability weights for the GBD 2013 study. METHODS: We analys...

To support public health policy, information on the burden of disease is essential. In recent years, the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY) has emerged as the most important summary measure of public health. DALYs quantify the number of healthy life years lost due to morbidity and mortality, and thereby facilitate the comparison of the relative i...

Listeriosis, caused by Listeria monocytogenes, is an important foodborne disease that can be difficult to control and commonly results in severe clinical outcomes. We aimed to provide the first estimates of global numbers of illnesses, deaths, and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to listeriosis, by synthesising information and knowledge t...

Background Parasitic zoonoses (PZs) pose a significant but often neglected threat to public health, especially in developing countries. In order to obtain a better understanding of their health impact, summary measures of population health may be calculated, such as the Disability-Adjusted Life Year (DALY). However, the data required to calculate s...