OBJECTIVES: Thailand’s top 5 burden of diseases in 2004 (based on the protocol of global burden of diseases (GBD) 2004) were HIV/AIDS, traffic accident, stroke, diabetes mellitus, and liver cancer, accounting for 947, 718, 652, 474, 407 Disability-Adjusted Life Years(DALYs) per 1000 population, respectively. The technique used by GBD to calculate the disability weight (DW) is based on an expert panel summary. However, this study measured DW directly from the patients and compared the results. METHODS: The cross-sectional observational multicenter hospital study was conducted in 2008-2009. The 2,695 sampling patients were selected based on epidemiologic disease data from outpatient, inpatient and primary-care unit in 5 major regional hospitals throughout Thailand. Selected patients were allocated in the quota slot and completed the EQ-5D questionnaires with their capabilities. The EQ-5D states were converted to utility weight (UW) using the Thai preference method and then changed into DW with linear regression function to then compare DALYs directly to the GBD result. RESULTS: Of 2695 patients, 56.99% are male, and the age is between 1 to 100 years old. The quality of life was calculated to DW with: DW = 0.688 + (-0.688 x UW). The new DW differs from GBD weight from -47.21 to 53.27 percent and these changes will affect the YLD and change the DALYs -2.83 to 4.84%. CONCLUSIONS: The new DW from the diseases and their complications differ from the GBD weight. This technique has the tendency to produce more DW that GBD’s. To establish the burden of diseases, we use the quality of life to reflect the true disability. The limitation that we have to improve is the way to calculate the disability weight from EQ-5D for the best prediction.