“HEALTH is the second blessing we mortals are capable of,” Izaak Walton once wrote.  So, would he have cheered those new-fangled “burden-of-disease” indicators?

The indicators show that every 1,000 Filipinos, like most other Asians, lose the equivalent of 259 years from illness-linked disabilities and premature deaths.

The Asian Development Bank has just published a study, “Health and Nutrition in Emerging Asia,” on those mint-new yardsticks for gauging public health.

Co-authored by University of Ulster’s S.R. Osmani and A. Bhargava from Houston University, the study applies these sophisticated ‘’tape measures’’ to this region.

Published in the latest issue of the bank’s journal, Asian Development Review, the results  jjolt.

Burden-of-disease indicators move beyond traditional measuring rods: life expectancy, death rates, sickness patterns, etc. This new gauge adds up ‘’life years lost due to diseases’’ and early graves.

Economists factor in two other estimates. One is years wasted by pre-mature deaths. For example, Filipinos live, on average, to 68 (52 for those in Tawi-Tawi) compared to 83 for Japanese. The second is "effective years.’’ That’s a price tag for time that sloshed down in the drain due to disabilities, inflicted by ailments. It’s sophisticated stuff. Scientists dub the result ‘’Dalys,’’ which is a shorthand for "disability-adjusted life-years per thousand of population.’’

And this comparatively new health ‘’tape measure’’ found the following:
o Every 1,000 Asians (that includes us, Pinoys) lose 259 ‘’life years’’ to premature graves or illness-linked disabilities.

o The worldwide average for ‘’total life years lost, in developing countries, is 294 years per 1,000 population.’’
o India lugs a 344-year “burden-of-disease.” The Sub-Saharan region “performs the worst...with a burden of 574 years.” China’s 178 years is the lowest among all the regions.
o For the rest of Asia, illness burden stands at 259 years, below the average for developing nations. This improved analytical tool could prove handy. The Philippines, like many Asian countries, is undergoing an “epidemiological transition.” An earlier Harvard University/World Health Organization report, “The Global Burden-of-Disease, popularized that tag.

The ADB prefers “the health transition.” Both refer to the ongoing radical shifts in patterns of deaths and illnesses, among the overfed and the underfed.

Changes in lifestyles, nutrition, income, environment, human fertility, age structure, education, etc. trigger this transition.

Where maladies of the poor once dominated, ailments of the affluent emerge with a vengeance.

Tuberculosis, diarrhea, pneumonia, measles, dengue, infant malnutrition are overtaken by stroke, diabetes, obesity, etc.   “Infectious communicable diseases give way to chronic and non-communicable diseases,” Osmani and Bhargava point out.

“Developing Asia has begun to experience this” transition, which industrialized nations underwent earlier.

“Obsolete” diseases still ravage chronically hungry people in Philippine slums, uplands and ironically parts of its “breadbasket”: Mindanao.

“Dalys” from these ailments, the ADB study notes, is devastating (580) on the most vulnerable: children under five years of age.

But in richer, urbanized places, like Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Germany, or our elite subdivisions, fat-saturated diets, sedentary lifestyles, stress, obesity, etc. jack up the incidence of chronic diseases.

President Estrada and his equally-overweight executive secretary, Ronaldo Zamora, made Xenical a buzzword.

But malnutrition stunts 28 percent of Visayan kids. Emaciated and obese coexist with their differing diseases. That non-infectious sicknesses are lower in farms and slums is cold comfort.   This transition’s two phases, the ADB study warns, do not follow in sequence; they interlock. Both richer and poorer countries “share a common predicament—that of an overlapping health transition,” it says.

“They must tackle simultaneously problems the western world had the privilege of tackling sequentially. Emerging Asia cannot afford this luxury.”

So, what do election aspirants say about securing good health for citizens, beyond outmoded refurbishing of run-down district hospitals or diverting sweepstakes funds into a Malacañang slush fund?  Safeguarding health will be costlier in the future, as populations age, the ADB warns.  Will candidates shift focus to prevention of risks and away from costly treatment?

Has anyone ideas for more cost-effective mechanisms to reach the rural poor, other than Jinggoy Estrada handling out keys to PCSO ambulances?

Survey after survey reveals that “ordinary citizens” fret over falling ill. That anxiety is rooted in lack of health insurance, far-from-adequate health systems, and spiraling cost of drugs.

The disease “transition” exacerbates all of them. Unfortunately, few candidates so far have responded to the truth that health, as Walton said, is a blessing to be cherished.  (DEPTHnews)
 

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