Risk Factors Associated With the Global Burden of Disease in Reunion Island and Comparison With Mainland France and Indian Ocean Countries

The definition of health priorities in a given territory is a major field of Public Health research. The World Health Organization has been conducting the Global Burden of Disease study since the 1990s. This study, which has been the subject of numerous publications, aims at estimating the burden for a given population of different causes of mortality and morbidity. It defines a standardized measure allowing comparisons between different countries. The measure developed internationally is the "Disability-adjusted life year" (DALY). This also allows the monitoring of the relative importance of each pathology. This standardized classification of the relative importance of the pathologies and risk factors involved is a major public health tool.

This measure was developed at the international level initially and then recently applied locally (London neighborhoods, US states). For the Indian Ocean zone, DALY values are available for Madagascar, Seychelles and Mauritius. The estimate of this measure for Reunion Island is based on data from metropolitan France. It therefore uses for Reunion mortality, morbidity, income per capita and social indicators of metropolitan France. It does not take into account the specificities of Reunion. In order to better understand Reunion's public health priorities, it seems important to decline this measure at the regional level. The implementation of this measure at the regional level corresponds to the research project AVIRON which aimed at collecting all the data for the calculation of the DALY in Reunion Island. The AVIRON-2 study, which extends AVIRON's focus on morbidity and mortality, will aim at determining the attributable part of the various disease risk factors and to classify these risk factors according to their importance in a given population for all diseases.