Mboi N, et al. - Authors evaluated the sources of early death and disability in Indonesia. Findings suggested an improvement in health across many indicators in Indonesia over the past 27 years. By rising deaths and a growing burden of non-communicable diseases, improvements are partly offset. Ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and diabetes were the three leading causes of disability-adjusted life-years in 2016. Leading contributor to the DALY burden were the dietary risks.

Methods

• Experts used Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2016 results for cause-specific deaths, years of life lost, years lived with disability, disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), life expectancy at birth, healthy life expectancy, and risk factors for 333 causes in Indonesia and in seven comparator countries.
• They produced estimates by location, year, age, and sex using methods outlined in GBD 2016.
• They generated expected values for each metric and compared these against observed results, using the Socio-demographic Index.

Results

• Findings suggested that life expectancy in Indonesia between 1990 and 2016, increased by 8 years (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 7.3–8.8) to 71.7 years (71.0-72.3), with the increase being 7.4 years (6.4-8.6) for males and 8.7 years (7.8-9.5) for females.
• As per data, total DALYs due to communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional causes decreased by 58.6% (95% UI 55.6-61.6), from 43.8 million (95% UI 41.4-46.5) to 18.1 million (16.8-19.6), whereas total DALYs from non-communicable diseases rose.
• They noted a decrease in DALYs due to injuries, both in crude rates and in age-standardized rates.
• Findings suggested that ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, and diabetes were the three leading causes of DALYs in 2016.
• A leading contributor to the DALY burden were dietary risks, accounting for 13.6% (11.8–15.4) of DALYs in 2016.