Even though cancers in the European union cause 16.7 per cent of total burden of disease, their treatment only makes 6.4 percent of the disease treatment costs. In 2002, cancer caused the loss of nearly 10 millions of DALYs. This makes cancer disease end up at 3rd place behind psychic diseases and cardiovascular diseases. DALY is the abbreviation for the terms „Disease-Adjusted Life Years“, which could be translated by year of life cleared of disabilty and is the most common measure for the determination of the burden of disease. 1 DALY corresponds to a „year lost due to premature death or to disability caused by disease“ by disease, as measured by the general life expectancy and weighted after grade of disabilty. The more daily life and functionality are limited by the disease, the higher the burden is scored and the more DALYs causes the disease. This unit of measure was created at the beginning 1990s by the world health organization(WHO) and the world bank for comparing the burden of disease in different countries and to evaluate the efficacy of health- and preventive measures. The measure is calculated with this formula: DALY = (N x L) (I x DW x L) N = Number of deaths L = remaining life expectancy at age of death (in years) I = Number of the cases with disability DW = Grade of disability L = average duration until healing or death (in years)More info here.