Disability-Adjusted Life Years for Communicable Disease in the Korean Burden of Disease Study 2012

Lee, Ye-Rin; Moon, Kanghee; Kim, Young Ae; Park, So-Youn; Oh, Chang-Mo; Lee, Kyung-Suk; Oh, In-Hwan

The substantial burden of communicable diseases requires a reconsideration of policy that acknowledges socioeconomic differences in Korea. Communicable diseases still represent a substantial proportion of the burden of disease in Korea. In 2012, among roughly 45,765,000 people, an estimated 10,672,000 people visited the hospital due to communicable diseases (ICD code; A00-B99) (7) . Besides, 7,106 deaths were attributed to communicable diseases (8). In addition, some communicable diseases influence the incidence of non-communicable diseases, and the prevalence of some types of these communicable diseases is higher in Korea. For example, in individuals over 10 years old, the prevalence of hepatitis B, a risk factor for liver cancer, was 3.2%, and in individuals over 30 years old the prevalence was 4.0%, significantly higher than that of other countries such as the USA (0.4%) (9) . Furthermore, some chronic communicable diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS remain a threat to Koreans. The incidence of tuberculosis was 96 per 100,000 in 2012, the highest among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries (10) . Finally, emerging infectious diseases, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002-2003, H1N1 influenza in 2009, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in 2015, have also threatened public health in Korea. In this respect, despite a decrease in the communicable disease DALYs, communicable diseases continue to affect public health.