The DALY approach is increasingly cited as a powerful tool for decision-makers in international health (Bobadilla et al 1994, Bobadilla 1996, Murray and Lopez 1996). It's attractiveness lies in the fact that it combines information about mortality and morbidity in a single number. DALYs allow the losses due to disability and the losses due to premature death to be expressed in the same unit. Hence, DALYs facilitate comparisons of different (in theory all) types of health states or health outcomes. In particular, this makes it easier to include the burden caused by disability and chronic diseases in cost-effectiveness studies. For instance, with such an index in place, one could say, that the number of DALYs due to the premature death of one girl aged 5, equals the number of DALYs caused by three girls of the same age suffering a below- knee amputation.