Zinc Deficiency and DALYs in India: Impact Assessment and Economic Analyses

Abstract

Although less obvious than outright lack of sufficient food, micronutrient malnutrition represents an economic and public health problem in many countries. Over the last years zinc deficiency has emerged as another major micronutrient deficiency, with a large proportion of the population being at risk, especially in the developing world. However, simple quantification of the number of people who suffer from a condition fails to take account of the depth of the problem. For comparison, monitoring or impact assessment purposes as well as cost-effectiveness or more general economic analyses, the health loss of a condition needs to be measured in a more comprehensive index. In this chapter the concept of disability-adjusted life years ( DALYs) is explained and a framework for its application to zinc deficiency is provided. DALYs were developed by the World Bank in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and are today used by many relevant organizations and for analyses in very different fields, in particular at the global level or in developing countries. By weighting the loss of an individual’s functioning due to ill health – relative to death and complete health – DALYs allow measuring morbidity and mortality in a single index that can be aggregated and compared across different conditions. The methodology is explained and discussed, and general data and parameters to calculate the loss of DALYs due to zinc deficiency are reported for the example of India.