Browsing by Person "Kouamé, Aka"

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The DALY, context and the determinants of the severity of disease: an exploratory comparison of paraplegia in Australia and Cameroon
(Elsevier, 2003-09) Allotey, Pascale; Reidpath, Daniel; Kouamé, Aka; Cummins, Robert
This paper summarises the findings of an empirical investigation of some of the technical and social assumptions on which the disability adjusted life year (DALY) is based. The objectives of the study were to examine the notion that the burden of disease is broadly similar without regard to country, environment, gender or socio-economic status and to develop detailed descriptions of the experiences of the burden of disease as they related to these contextual factors. The study was a multi-factorial exploratory study employing qualitative and quantitative techniques to obtain data on the effects of country (development), environment (urban versus rural), gender and socio-economic status on people with paraplegia. The data provided an extensive and detailed compilation of context rich descriptions of living with paraplegia. Striking features of the data were the differences between countries with respect to the impact of the health conditions on functioning and highlight a context in which paraplegia of like clinical severity can be fatal in one environment and not in another. While there has been some focus on the control of social determinants of disease, there has been little work on the social determinants of the severity of disease. The underlying assumptions of the DALY, which ignore context in the assessment of the burden of disease, risk exacerbating inequalities by undervaluing the burden of disease in less-developed countries. There is a need to continue to subject the development of indicators to rigorous debate to determine a balance between the assumption of a global “average social milieu” and the treatment of each individual as belonging to their own context in the assessment of population health in order for indicators to be meaningful cross-culturally.
Social, cultural and environmental contexts and the measurement of burden of disease : an exploratory comparison of the developed and developing world
(University of Melbourne, 2001) Reidpath, Daniel; Allotey, Pascale; Kouamé, Aka; Cummins, Robert
The Disability Adjusted Life Year (DALY) is a measure of population health that was developed, as part of a World Bank initiated study, to inform health strategy development, priority setting, resource allocation and research, and to measure the global burden of disease. The innovative feature of the DALY was the combination of information on morbidity and mortality within a single index. Since its development in 1992, the rate at which it has been adopted by governments, multilateral agencies and researchers has been staggering. The enthusiasm with which the measure has been taken-up perhaps reflects a desire on the part of health policy makers to embrace an “evidence-based” approach to health policy. Although the DALY has been heavily criticised in some quarters, it has survived. There are a number of reasons why this may be: • It is a good measure of population health; • The enormous political will to see it succeed; and • The lack of empirical data to challenge the validity of the DALY; • In addition, many of the criticisms of the DALY have been about the implicit and explicit social values, which are hard to argue on technical grounds. This report details the findings of an empirical investigation of some of the technical and social assumptions on which the DALY is based.