Lost Output by Road Traffic Injuries in Iran, an Estimate Based on Disability-Adjusted Life Years Index

The main objective of this study is to estimate a part of road traffic injury costs including costs due to fatality and disability,which are related to lost social products. Lost output consists of costs, which are related to losses of nationalproduct or lost-income in death, hospitalization or physical disabilities. In recent years, the Disability-Adjusted LifeYears (DALYs) has been used as an appropriate criterion to measure mortality and disability burden from differentdiseases. The DALYs index for a definite disease is defined as total years of life lost due to a premature death (YLL)and the years lost due to disability (YLD) for the disease. The distribution of fatalities and disabilities in age intervalstakes advantage of official references including Legal Medicine Organization reports on road fatalities and HarvardUniversity surveys in road-crash-related disability dispersion in Iran. According to this distribution, life expectancycan be determined for the used age distribution in this study. This study indicates that the highest amount of the lifeyears lost due to road fatalities belongs to the age range of 11-29 years old in Iran for whom, an average value of lostuseful life is estimated more than 12 years. The total output value or lost product due to death or disabilities by trafficinjuries is estimated approximately 1.4 Billion USD in 2011. As a social cumulative criterion, it stands for the secondcost contributing factor after medical costs. The study has shown that the lost output is identified as the main part ofcosts imposed on each individual killed by a road traffic injury.

Keywords:

Road traffic injuries , economic cost , lost output , gross domestic product