Sergei Petrovich Ermakov

Background The Global Burden of Diseases (GBD), Injuries, and Risk Factors study used the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) to quantify the burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors. This paper provides an overview of injury estimates from the 2013 update of GBD, with detailed information on incidence, mortality, DALYs and rates of change from 1990 to 2013 for 26 causes of injury, globally, by region and by country. Methods Injury mortality was estimated using the extensive GBD mortality database, corrections for ill-defined cause of death and the cause of death ensemble modelling tool. Morbidity estimation was based on inpatient and outpatient data sets, 26 cause-of-injury and 47 nature-of-injury categories, and seven follow-up studies with patient-reported long-term outcome measures. Results In 2013, 973 million (uncertainty interval (UI) 942 to 993) people sustained injuries that warranted some type of healthcare and 4.8 million (UI 4.5 to 5.1) people died from injuries. Between 1990 and 2013 the global age-standardised injury DALY rate decreased by 31% (UI 26% to 35%). The rate of decline in DALY rates was significant for 22 cause-of-injury categories, including all the major injuries. Conclusions Injuries continue to be an important cause of morbidity and mortality in the developed and developing world. The decline in rates for almost all injuries is so prominent that it warrants a general statement that the world is becoming a safer place to live in. However, the patterns vary widely by cause, age, sex, region and time and there are still large improvements that need to be made.

Changes in reproductive behavior among young people in Russia, changing patterns of marriage and family formation, and high death rates among males are all affecting Russia's human capital potentia...

Large-scale abrupt socioeconomic changes are often associated with unsustainable conditions in terms of populations' health. An epidemic increase in suicide death rates has been recorded in Russia during the turbulent period of the socioeconomic transition. The socioeconomic aetiology of suicide mortality has been analysed for a large set of Russian regions. Suicide rates were statistically accounted for by the 'transition-related stressors' – hyperinflation, severe economic depression, etc. Deficiency of coping resources – lacking economic activities of the regional populations – turned out to be the strongest explanatory variable. Heavy binge drinking was a significant, but not the leading mortality predictor. The study results support the idea that sustainable socioeconomic development is crucial for the prevention of stress-related mortality.

This report provides comparative vital and health statistics data for recent years for the Russian Federation and the United States. Statistical data for Russia and from the Ministry of Health of Russia and from Goskomstat, the central statistical organization of Russia. Information for the United States comes from various data systems of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) as well as other parts of the Department of Health and Human Services. The initial section of the report summarizes information on recent mortality trends in the Russian Federation. During the 1990s, Russia experienced a major increase in mortality from 1990 to 1994, a substantial reduction in mortality from 1994 to 1998, and another major increase from 1998 to 2000. The mortality overview uses tables and figures to describe mortality changes by age group, sex, and cause of death, and to determine the contribution of each of these to changes in life expectancy. The overview also considers risk factors and other issues underlying these trends, in an attempt to understand the impact of major mortality determinants on changes in life expectancy. The section on vital and health statistics uses tables, figures, and commentary to present information on many different health measures for the populations of the two countries. Topics covered include population size, fertility, life expectancy, infant mortality, death rates, communicable diseases, and various health personnel and health resource measures. The commentary includes a discussion of data quality issues that affect the accuracy and comparability of the information presented. Data are provided for selected years from 1985 to 2000. In addition to national data, mortality information on urban and rural subgroups in Russia is provided. A glossary of terms at the end of the report provides additional information on definitions and data sources and limitations.