Executive Summary

The Burden of Disease Research Unit at the South African Medical Research Council is currently undertaking the Second National Burden of Disease study for South Africa (SA NBD2). Despite South Africa having data sources to estimate mortality, data to estimate non-fatal burden are sparse. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study and the WHO Burden of Disease Study produced years of life lived with a disability (YLDs) by causes, disease categories and broad cause group for South Africa that could be used to fill this gap.

Each burden of disease study has a list of aggregated causes, disease categories and broad cause groups that is coined the burden of disease list. The structure and composition of the list used in a burden of disease study has implications for the resultant rankings of diseases. The burden of disease list for the SANBD2, the GBD and the WHO studies have similar disease lists with some differences.

This document outlines the method used to map the SA NBD2 list to the GBD list, as well as the SA NBD2 list to the WHO list. Amongst other things, the mapping will be used to harness the YLD estimates from either the GBD or the WHO study for estimation of Disability Adjusted Life Years for South Africa.

View the complete SA NBD-GBD and SA NBD-WHO cause list mappings for the second South African National Burden of Disease Report