Acute disease and other events

The MSLT models presented here use a time-step size of 1 year. So it is not sensible to talk about the prevalence of acute diseases (such as lower respiratory tract infections) and acute events (such as road traffic accidents), which may affect the all-cause mortality and YLD rate, but whose duration is significantly less than that of a single time-step.

The acute events are therefore characterised in terms of two rates:

• Their excess mortality rate; and

• Their YLD rate.

An intervention could affect either or both of these rates.

For example, regular use of face masks could reduce the transmission of respiratory infections, which would reduce the mortality and YLD rates for respiratory infections.

Conversely, encouraging people to undertake short trips on foot could increase the rate of pedestrian-vehicle collisions, which would increase the mortality and YLD rates for road traffic accidents.