Health decline in Poland after 2002: response to a recent analysis of the changes in disease burden in Poland

Abstract

In March 2020 “PLoS One” published a paper by Gańczak and colleagues exploring the trends in years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in Poland between 1990 and 2017, concluding that health in Poland is improving. Our research demonstrates that for the last 18 years Poland has experienced a public health crisis culminating in a health recession. In the period between 2003 and 2018 health growth in Poland first slowed down, and then came to a halt. Finally, between 2017 and 2018 life expectancy in Poland was declined. It is becoming increasingly obvious that one of the main causes of this health recession in the first decades of the 21 st century has been the sudden and very pronounced increase in causes of death wholly attributable to alcohol consumption in Poland.