The global burden of disease study 2013: What does it mean for the NTDs?

The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) is a landmark initiative that systematically quantifies the prevalence, morbidity, and mortality for hundreds of diseases, injuries, and risk factors of global health importance. For the neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), the GBD 2010 confirmed a high disease burden for the 17 major NTDs prioritized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as well as for selected conditions also recognized as NTDs by PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, including amoebiasis, cholera, cryptosporidiosis, typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, trichomoniasis, venomous animal contact, and scabies (referred to here as additional NTDs) [1]. The GBD 2013 is intended to be the first in a series of annual updates for the GBD studies, with its initial results published in 2015 in The Lancet [2-4]. Here, we review information on the NTDs published in the GBD 2013 capstone papers [2-4] and present new NTD data and updated burden estimates from the GBD 2013 study and new country-specific estimates. We show key outputs of GBD 2013 including country-specific estimates of prevalence or incidence and health-gap metrics for the aforementioned NTDs.