Photo: ANP
Covid took by far the healthiest years of life of all infectious diseases last year. According to a calculation by the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), the disease led to the loss of 218,900 healthy years of life for the Dutch in one year. This includes both premature death and years of healthy life “missed” due to illness.
The disease burden due to corona was therefore slightly higher last year than in 2020. For that year, RIVM reached 207,000 healthy years lost.
Due to all the corona measures, various other infectious diseases have probably been suppressed. Influenza, for example, is not in the top three in terms of disease burden. There was a modest flu outbreak last winter, but it only started late, when far-reaching measures had already been released. A disease like whooping cough has almost disappeared.
Second in terms of disease burden is legionella, with 6,300 years of healthy life lost. Severe pneumococcal disease took 6,200 healthy years, the researchers estimated.
One infectious disease that has continued to spread, despite all hygiene measures, is scabies. Researchers are unaware of the cause of this increase. They stress that fighting scabies must primarily be done through a “group-oriented approach.” This means, for example, that in a home all residents participate in treatments and follow washing instructions to get rid of the scabies mite, which is the culprit.
“General practitioners or dermatologists often focus on treating individual patients, but given the national increase, this approach appears to be insufficiently effective because too little attention is paid to treating contacts,” according to the RIVM. Information is also important, especially for young people who have many different contacts.
