Burden of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases-Measles Tetanus Diphtheria and Whooping Cough-in Iran: Findings from the GBD study 2010.

Thursday, 23rd of June 2016

Arch Iran Med. 2016 Jun;19(6):382-7. doi: 0161906/AIM.003.

Burden of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases-Measles Tetanus Diphtheria and Whooping Cough-in Iran: Findings from the GBD study 2010.

Mokhayeri Y¹ Naderimagham S² Mohammadi R³ Rahimi E³ Rahimzadeh S⁴ Badirzadeh A⁵ Saeedi Moghaddam S⁶ Chegini M⁷ Kompani F⁸ Hashemi-Nazari SS⁹.

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Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Vaccination has been one of the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions in the last century and has saved millions of lives. In 1984 the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) was launched in Iran as one of the main components of Primary Health Care (PHC). 

OBJECTIVES:

We aimed to investigate the burden of four vaccine-preventable diseases from 1990 to 2010 in Iran.

METHODS:

GBD study 2010 includes death rates Years of Life Lost (YLLs) Years Lived with Disability (YLDs) and Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). YLLs is calculated through multiplying the number of deaths in each age group by a reference life expectancy for the same age group while YLDs can be obtained from the prevalence of a disease multiplied by the disability weight (DW) for the same disease. The sum of these two indices yields DALYs. In the present study we tried to produce new graphs and explain more about Iran results.  We also describe the GBD study limitations.

RESULTS:

Regardless of gender differences DALYs rates for measles at all ages were 86.1220 and 5.5703 per 100 000 in 1990 and 2010 respectively indicating approximately 94% decrease in this disease. The maximum and minimum rates of deaths from whooping cough for males aged under 5 was 4.0674 and 0.2713 per 100 000 in 1990 and 2000 respectively which shows 93% decline in whooping cough from in this period.

CONCLUSION:

This study demonstrated that vaccination has had a positive impact on the control of communicable diseases. But the results of this study have some limitations similar to GBD study which may pave the way for decision makers about other public health interventions. Moreover since measuring the impact of various diseases on health plays an important role in public health it can be an important step toward prioritization in health.