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every year , seven million of 1.4 billion people -- a quarter of the world's total population squeezed into five per cent of its land area -- fall prey to communicable diseases, most
often "associated with poverty, overpopulation and deprivation, arising out of malnutrition, ignorance and crowded unhygienic living conditions." These are the hard facts borne out
by the World Health Organization's ( who ) first South-East Asia regional ( sear ) health report, presented on September 10 by the regional director Uton Muchtar Rafei in Chiang Mai in
Thailand, traces the links between socio-economic policies, poverty and health status of people in 10 member nations. The statistics make a mixed bag, depressing on the whole. In six sear
countries -- Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Nepal -- 70 out of 1,000 babies die before their first birthday, an unacceptably high rate. All these countries with high
infant mortality rates ( imr ), except Indonesia, had per capita gross national product ( gnp ) below us $500. The imr is much lower in dpr Korea (North) and Thailand, which are countries
with better economic status and Sri Lanka, where the government spends more on health. The imr tread also reveals that the higher the female literacy rate, the lower the infant mortality
rate. who points out that disparities in income and availability of healthcare vary in the sear nations. The gnp per capita in the region varies from us $170 in Bhutan to us $2,110 in
Thailand. The 1990 figures available from six countries covering 95 per cent of the sear population showed that 507 million people still lived in poverty -- that is, with hardly enough
income to get adequate diet plus other essential requirements. The poverty-related diseases remain the scourge of the area. Diarrhoea accounts for 25 per cent of these deaths, although 90
per cent of the cases are curable. Tuberculosis ( tb ) kills more adults than any other disease, with an estimated toll of 1.2 million in 1995. Of these deaths, 80 per cent were in the most
productive age group of 18-59, thus affecting the socio-economic development. Communicable diseases that are controllable still haunt the region due to inadequate control measures and lack
of sustainable follow-ups. In sear, 19 million people suffer from filariasis and 500 million people live at risk. Malaria dominates the disease scale with 1.2 billion people living at risk
in malarious areas. Dengue and dengue haemorrhagic fever continue to persist with 400,00 cases and 8,000 deaths in 1995. The major crisis awaiting the region is the pandemic of aids . By the
turn of the century, eight to 10 million men, women and children are likely to be infected with hiv , accounting for 25 per cent of the world's cases. The region accounts for 150
million curable cases of sexually transmitted diseases. As for the future, the who notes that new vaccines against bacterial and parasitic diseases and new insecticides are likely to be
developed soon but their prices would be beyond the reach of the developing countries. "Only five per cent of the global expenditure on health research is concerned with the needs of
developing countries, which suffer 93 per cent of the world's premature mortality." who has recommended that governments should ensure equitable access to healthcare, promote
community partnership and formulate policies on privatisation so that essential public health programmes will not be out of reach for the poor.