Belgian National Burden of Disease Study

What are the most important diseases in Belgium? Which risk factors contribute most to the overall disease burden? How is the burden of disease evolving over time, and how does it differ across the country? In a context of increasing budgetary constraints, a precise answer to these basic questions is more than ever necessary to inform policy-making.

To address this need, Sciensano is conducting a national burden of disease study. In addition to generating internally consistent estimates of death rate (mortality) or how unhealthy we are (morbidity) by age, sex and region, the burden of disease will also be quantified using Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs). The use of DALY allows to estimate the years of life lost from premature death and years of life lived with disabilities. It therefore permits a truly comparative ranking of the burden of various diseases, injuries and risk factors.

For more info, please visit the BeBOD project page or read the BeBOD protocol.

Other BeBOD visualisation tools

Estimates of the fatal burden of 131 causes of death

Estimates of the fatal and non-fatal burden of 38 key diseases

Estimates of the risk attributable burden

Estimates of projected non-fatal burden of 33 causes

BeBOD estimates of the burden of cancer

Our estimates of the burden of cancer in Belgium are based on the official cancer incidence data compiled by the Belgian Cancer Registry. BCR collects, validates, and analyses data on all new cancer diagnoses in Belgium since 2004, and periodically publishes data on cancer incidence, prevalence, mortality and survival on their website and in their reports. In addition to showing the number of new cancer diagnoses, we also quantify the 10-year prevalence for each cancer site, and measure the non-fatal disease burden in terms of Years Lived with Disability (YLDs). The methodology for generating these estimates is described in Gorasso et al. (2022).

Explore our estimates

Trends

Explore trends in the burden of cancer, by age, sex and region.

Rankings

Sort the different cancer sites by their importance, for different combinations of year, age, sex and region.

Results

Explore and download our estimates of the burden of cancer.

Download all estimates

All estimates can be downloaded in csv format via Zenodo:

Citation

Vanessa Gorasso, Sarah Croes, Robby De Pauw, Geert Silversmit, Mathilde Vankelegom & Brecht Devleesschauwer. (2025). BeBOD estimates of incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 57 cancer sites, 2004-2022 (v2025-02-14) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14871079

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Download files should be interpreted together with the methodological notes and selection criteria described below.

Data source for cancer incidence: Belgian Cancer Registry

Disclaimer

Absolute numbers of new cancer diagnoses differ from those reported by the Belgian Cancer Registry (BCR). BCR collects, validates and reports data on all new cancer diagnoses in Belgium since 2004. In the BeBOD study, the category ‘all neoplasms’ includes non melanoma skin cancers other than basal cell carcinoma. Because these lesions generally impose a limited burden on patients and on the healthcare system, BCR excludes them from overall cancer statistics and reports them only in separate categories. Additionally, earlier incidence years in BeBOD are not updated to incorporate delayed or corrected cancer registrations, whereas BCR does apply such updates on their website.

Selection criteria

All cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin): ICD-10: C00-C43, C45-C97, MDS, MPN.

MDS: myelodysplastic syndromes
MPN: myeloproliferative neoplasms