New Burden of Disease study shows world’s people living longer but with more disability

Disability is becoming the world's dominant health concern, according to a study produced over five years by nearly 500 researchers in 50 countries offers the most detailed look at health on the population level ever attempted. And its findings show that the health of most of the planet's population increasingly resembles that of the United States: childhood death is rare, obesity is a bigger problem than starvation, and life is long but plagued with inevitable disability. As a result, health care systems are ill-equipped to handle this kind of sea change in health care patterns.