Skin Diseases

Excerpt

In assigning health priorities, skin diseases are sometimes thought of, in planning terms, as small-time players in the global league of illness compared with diseases that cause significant mortality, such as HIV/AIDS, community-acquired pneumonias, and tuberculosis. However, skin problems are generally among the most common diseases seen in primary care settings in tropical areas, and in some regions where transmissible diseases such as tinea imbricata or onchocerciasis are endemic, they become the dominant presentation. For instance, the World Health Organization's 2001 report (Mathers 2006) on the global burden of disease indicated that skin diseases were associated with mortality rates of 20,000 in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2001. This burden was comparable to mortality rates attributed to meningitis, hepatitis B, obstructed labor, and rheumatic heart disease in the same region. Using a comparative assessment of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) from the same report, the World Health Organization recorded an estimated total of 896,000 DALYs for the region in the same year, similar to that attributed to gout, endocrine disease, panic disorders, and war-related injuries. As noted later, those figures require confirmation by more detailed studies, and their practical application to health interventions needs to be tested.