The above table is a reproduction of table 5 from the 2005 WHO European health report (WHO, 2005f). The explanatory information presented below was also taken from this Report.
The country estimates for risk factors are based on the comparative risk assessment analyses carried out for the World Health Report 2002 (WHO, 2002d), but with updated country burden and country-specific exposure data for around four of the risk factors. For most risk factors, either the data for average exposure for the country groups, or the overall disease-specific population the data for average exposure for the country groups, or the overall disease-specific population attributable fractions (PAFs) for the country groups were used at the country level. In particular, the country-specific alcohol exposures are based on a preliminary adjustment of subregional consumption distributions, using country estimates of abstainers and apparent consumption.
The risk factors and conditions are interrelated. Individual risk factors are linked to different proportions of the total burden in DALYs.
| Purely arithmetically, the sum of the DALYs attributable to each of the risk factors individually amounts to 60% of the total in the Region. This does not mean that the joint impact of those risk factors on the population’s health amounts to 60% of the total DALYs. It is less, because several diseases are caused by more than one risk factor, and each factor contributes to more than one condition.
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Literature and data sources
 express years of life lost to premature death and years lived with a disabilty of specified severity. One DALY is thus one lost year of healthy life.
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