Global Mapping of an Unusual Health Indicator

Source

The data comes from the Global Burden of Disease study.

Years of lost life is an alternative index of disease to the more traditional mortality rate. It recognizes that when a disease kills a child rather than an old person, more years of life are probably lost. Thus when a child dies of diarrhea, pneumonia or malaria, more years are lost than when an old person dies of heart disease or stroke. Thus you can infer from the map above that survival rates are better in more affluent countries than in Africa -- something that we already knew. The map does suggest where public health programs might most usefully focus in different countries.