Abstract: Objective To explore the disease hurden of card iovascular diseases(CVD) among rural and urban residents of Kunming city in 2006.Methods Panlong district and Shilin county were selected as study area with smiple random sampling method.Years of life lost(YLL) was used as the measurment of disease burden.Standardized YLL per 1 000 population rate was calculated for different area and sex without age-weighting but with 3% discounting rate.Results Stroke was the leading cause of premature death in both rural and urban residents.The urban residents had obviously higher premature mortality due to ischemic heart disease(IHD) than the rural residents(4.09 vs 1.44),whereas the rural residents had higher YLL rate of stroke(13.79) and hypertensive diseases(2.39) than the urban residents(12.39 vs 0.96).The YLL rate of stroke was higher among males than among females for both rural and urban residents(16.31 vs 11.22,13.33 vs 11.34); the same situation was found in YLL rate of IHD (4.53 vs 3.59 in the urban area and 1.56 vs 1.32 in the rural area).The females had a higher YLL rate of hyper tensive disea ses than males(1.26 vs 0.70 in the urban area and 2.59 vs 2.19 in the rural area).Conclusion The control and prevention of CVD should be emphasized to reduce the disease burden.There are significant differences in disease burden caused by premature death of CVD between male and female and bewteen urban and rural residents.