. "4. Comparison of Disease Burdens." New Vaccine Development: Establishing Priorities: Volume II, Diseases of Importance in Developing Countries. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1986.
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New Vaccine Development: Establishing Priorities, Volume II, Diseases of Importance in Developing Countries
TABLE 4.10 Ranking of Diseases by Total Disease Burden Values
bValues represent the anticipated disease burden from certain diarrheal pathogens if a plausible increase in oral rehydration therapy is assumed (see Appendix C) .
disease burden value for each disease may be regarded by some as obscuring important differences among disease consequences. Although they are assigned to the same generic morbidity category, some disease conditions may be regarded as more severe (more undesirable) than those of another disease. This problem exists with any category system; to assign trade-off (or IME) values to the whole spectrum of conditions arising from all diseases would be too complex and unmanageable.
Additionally, the system does not, as presently conceived, permit differentiation of diseases on the basis of episode duration. That is, it does not indicate whether hospitalization of 100 individuals for 2 days each is more or less desirable than 1 individual for 200 days, or 10 individuals for 20 days.
Other disease characteristics not recognized by the proposed system include the following:
The epidemic potential of the disease: the average annual incidence is used for comparative purposes, but certain epidemic
