Burden of Chronic Diseases in the Palestinian Healthcare Sector Using Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY), Palestine

Background: Chronic diseases are considered the greatest public health concern globally, and contributor to a large burden of disease in developed world, and increasing rapidly in developing countries as well as Palestine. Where, Palestine is experiencing an epidemiological transition and a rapid increasing burden of chronic diseases as a consequence of rapid modifications in people behaviors. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project has made possible a new methodological approach and conceptual framework to estimate the burden of diseases and other health problems in populations everywhere nationally and globally. Objective: We quantify the burden of chronic diseases using disability – adjusted life years (DALYs) for 2010 in the Palestinian healthcare sector. Methodology: In this study, we adapted Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) methodology for measuring the burden of chronic diseases in the main two entities of Palestinian territories, using Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) measurement. The measurement tools and their standards templates were specially designed for assessing the burden of disease, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to estimate and quantify the burden of chronic diseases. The study used secondary data extracted from multiple sources including Ministry of Health (MOH) materials and annual reports about chronic diseases mortalities registered in 2010 and also data about chronic diseases morbidity collected by Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) Demographic & Heath Survey data 2010 (DHS) performed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Results: In 2010, DALYS lost due to selected chronic diseases in the current study were estimated as (60/1000 DALYs) in the West Bank while (57/1000 DALYs) in Gaza Strip respectively, considering that each one DALY is thought of as one lost year of ideal healthy life. Ischemic heart disease (IHD) and hypertension contributed to the highest proportion of DALYs among males and females in 2010 in the West Bank and Gaza strip followed with cancer (lung cancer in males vs. breast cancer in females) and then respiratory disease (COPD) with small difference in rank order. There also were sex and region differences. Heart diseases specifically Ischemic heart disease (IHD) also continued to rank highly as a cause of both YLLs and mortality, followed by cancer among Palestinian populations in both the West Bank and Gaza strip for both sexes in 2010, indicating the major causes of chronic diseases burden in Palestine in 2010. Conclusion: Our study demonstrates that heart diseases followed with cancer remains the major chronic diseases burden in the Palestinian healthcare sector in the Palestinian territories in both Gaza strip and West bank. Our study recommends that further studies using more recent data are important and needed. Additionally, our study findings indicate the need for basic intervention to tackle these burdens. In general, attention has to be increasingly paid to chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) in the Palestinian territories.