World Bank’s scientific contributions

The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) approach is a systematic, scientific effort to quantify the comparative magnitude of health loss due to diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and geography for specific points in time. Box 1 describes the history of GBD. The latest iteration of that effort, the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2010 (GBD 2010), was published in The Lancet in December 2012. The intent is to create a global public good that will be useful for informing the design of health systems and the creation of public health policy. It estimates premature death and disability due to 291 diseases and injuries, 1,160 sequelae (direct consequences of disease and injury), and 67 risk factors for 20 age groups and both sexes in 1990, 2005, and 2010. GBD 2010 produced estimates for 187 countries and 21 regions. In total, the study generated over 1 billion estimates of health outcomes.