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Global Burden of Childhood Epilepsy, Intellectual Disability, and Sensory Impairments

Olusanya BO 1 , Wright SM 2 , Nair MKC 3 , Boo NY 4 , Halpern R 5 , Kuper H 6 Show all authors , Abubakar AA 7 , Almasri NA 8 , Arabloo J 9 , Arora NK 10 , Backhaus S 11 , Berman BD 12 , Breinbauer C 13 , Carr G 14 , de Vries PJ 15 , Del Castillo-Hegyi C 16 , Eftekhari A 17 , Gladstone MJ 18 , Hoekstra RA 19 , Kancherla V 20 , Mulaudzi MC 21 , Kakooza-Mwesige A 22 , Ogbo FA 23 , Olsen HE 24 , Olusanya JO 1 , Pandey A 25 , Samms-Vaughan ME 26 , Servili C 27 , Shaheen A 28 , Smythe T 6 , Wertlieb D 29 , Williams AN 30 , Newton CRJ 7 , Davis AC 14 , Kassebaum NJ 31 , Global Research on Developmental Disabilities Collaborators (GRDDC)

Affiliations 

  • 1 Centre for Healthy Start Initiative, Lagos, Nigeria; bolajoko.olusanya@uclmail.net
  • 2 Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland
  • 3 NIMS Spectrum Child Development Research Centre, NIMS Medicity, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India
  • 4 Department of Population Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Selangor, Malaysia
  • 5 Department of Pediatrics and Adolescence, University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre, Porto Alegrel, Brazil
  • 6 International Centre for Evidence in Disability, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
  • 7 Kenya Medical Research Institute-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Centre for Geographic Medicine Research (Coast), Kenya Medical Research Institute, KiIifi, Kenya
  • 8 Department of Physiotherapy, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
  • 9 Health Management and Economics Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
  • 10 The INCLEN Trust International, New Delhi, India
  • 11 Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
  • 12 Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Francisco Benioff Children's Hospital, San Francisco, California
  • 13 Center for Healthy Development, Seattle, Washington
  • 14 Ear Institute, University College London, London, United Kingdom
  • 15 Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
  • 16 Department of Emergency Medicine, CHI St. Vincent, Little Rock, Arkansas
  • 17 Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Maragheh University of Medical Sciences, Maragheh, Iran
  • 18 Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
  • 19 Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, United Kingdom
  • 20 Department of Epidemiology, Emory University Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, Georgia
  • 21 Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
  • 22 Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Makerere University College of Health Sciences, Kampala, Uganda
  • 23 Translational Health Research Institute, School of Medicine, Western Sydney University, Campbelltown Campus, Penrith, New South Wales, Australia
  • 24 Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington
  • 25 Nepal Health Research Council, Kathmandu, Nepal
  • 26 Department of Child and Adolescent Health, The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, Kingston, Jamaica
  • 27 Department of Mental Health and Substance Use, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 28 Division of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine
  • 29 Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
  • 30 Virtual Academic Unit, Northampton General Hospital, Northampton, United Kingdom; and
  • 31 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Pediatrics, 2020 Jul;146(1).
PMID: 32554521 DOI: 10.1542/peds.2019-2623

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Estimates of children and adolescents with disabilities worldwide are needed to inform global intervention under the disability-inclusive provisions of the Sustainable Development Goals. We sought to update the most widely reported estimate of 93 million children <15 years with disabilities from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2004.

METHODS: We analyzed Global Burden of Disease Study 2017 data on the prevalence of childhood epilepsy, intellectual disability, and vision or hearing loss and on years lived with disability (YLD) derived from systematic reviews, health surveys, hospital and claims databases, cohort studies, and disease-specific registries. Point estimates of the prevalence and YLD and the 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) around the estimates were assessed.

RESULTS: Globally, 291.2 million (11.2%) of the 2.6 billion children and adolescents (95% UI: 249.9-335.4 million) were estimated to have 1 of the 4 specified disabilities in 2017. The prevalence of these disabilities increased with age from 6.1% among children aged <1 year to 13.9% among adolescents aged 15 to 19 years. A total of 275.2 million (94.5%) lived in low- and middle-income countries, predominantly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The top 10 countries accounted for 62.3% of all children and adolescents with disabilities. These disabilities accounted for 28.9 million YLD or 19.9% of the overall 145.3 million (95% UI: 106.9-189.7) YLD from all causes among children and adolescents.

CONCLUSIONS: The number of children and adolescents with these 4 disabilities is far higher than the 2004 estimate, increases from infancy to adolescence, and accounts for a substantial proportion of all-cause YLD.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

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