The journal of headache and pain
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This overview of the published epidemiological evidence of migraine helps to identify the size of the public-health problem that migraine represents. It also highlights the need for further epidemiological studies in many parts of the world to gain full understanding of the scale of clinical, economic and humanistic burdens attributable to it. This paper presents some of the work on migraine undertaken by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the Global Burden of Disease study conducted in 2000 and reported in the World Health Report 2001. ⋯ Migraine causes a large proportion of the non-fatal disease-related burden worldwide. Our knowledge of headache related burden is incomplete and it is necessary to add to it epidemiological studies in many parts of the world and to combine this with measurements of disability using both DALYs and WHO's ICF Classification. The work described here has been the base for the Global Campaign against Headache disorders: "Lifting the Burden", launched in 2004 jointly by WHO, IHS (International Headache Society), WHA (World Headache Alliance) and EHF (European Headache Federation).