World Bank’s “Investing in Health”: What we learned about the Global Burden of Disease?
Patricio V. Marquex, lead health specialist in the Health, Nutrition, and Population Global Practice at the World Bank, and Melanie Walker, senior adviser to the president and director of the World Bank Group’s Delivery Unit, discuss findings from the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation’s (IHME) 2015 Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) study, writing, “In moving the global health agenda forward, an important message from the GBD that we should keep in mind is that development drives, but does not determine, the health status of the population. … This inescapable reality reinforces the need for integrated approaches at the country level that address functions (prevention, treatment, and care) rather than disease categories. And given the multisectoral nature of health conditions, actions that reach beyond the health system … have to be essential components of an effective arsenal of interventions to improve health conditions globally” (10/12).