Step 1: What is being measured?
Burden of disease is not just about how many people die. It is about how much healthy life is lost overall, from both death and disability.
Step 2: Recall the tool built for this.
The DALY, short for Disability Adjusted Life Year, was made for this exact job. It adds up years lost to early death (YLL) and years lived with disability (YLD) into a single number for each disease.
Step 3: Check the other choices.
Case fatality rate looks only at people who already have the disease and tells us how deadly it is to them, not the burden on the whole population. Dependence rate is a population structure ratio unrelated to disease. Morbidity data alone just counts sick people without weighing how severe or long lasting the illness is.
Step 4: Conclude.
Since DALY is the only measure that folds both death and disability into a single comparable score, it is the accepted best index for burden of disease.
\[ \boxed{\text{Disability Adjusted Life Years}} \]