Bitter Pills:Medicines & The Third World Poor | Page 13
15.1 million are from developing countries, and of these, 12 million deaths could
probably be avoided. l7>
The under-fives are especially at risk because they have little resistance to disease,
and their vulnerability becomes acute when they are malnourished. Repeated bouts
of diarrhoea and other common infections reduce a child's ability to absorb food.
The child becomes weak and stops growing and may become severely
malnourished. This precipitates a vicious circle of malnutrition and disease that
is often only broken with the child's death. A large-scale.study of child deaths
in the impoverished north-east of Brazil found that measles was the probable cause
of half of all child deaths. But three-quarters of these children also showed obvious
signs of malnutriton. '*' The problem of malnutrition is not of course confined
to those who die. Many are saved from death but are left severely physically and
mentally disabled.
Poor nutrition undermines the health of other vulnerable groups in the community,
such as pregnant and lactating mothers who can become severely anaemic from
the effects of repeated pregnancies. A recent nutritional study carried out in North
Yemen found that in one region almost three-quarters of mothers were suffering
from anaemia. (91 In most developing countries the basic food intake of a large
section of the population is totally inadequate for their health needs. It was
estimated in 1980 that at least a third of the people in Mozambique get less calories
than they require. (l0) In the very poorest countries, such as Bangladesh, where
there is tremendous pressure on the land and rapid population growth, there is
likely to be a much higher percentage of people undernourished and consequently
vulnerable to infectious disease.
COMMUNICABLE DISEASES
People in the Third World today suffer from the same communicable diseases
that were widespread in developed countries in the nineteenth century. Many of
these illnesses are transmitted by food and water contaminated by disease
organisms from human and animal excreta. They include diarrhoeal disease,
amoebic and bacterial dysentery, typhoid, cholera, polio and infectious hepatitis,
which are all major problems in the Third World. (ll)
One Bangladeshi expert on diarrhoeal disease describes it as the major health
scourge of Asia, responsible for at least half and possibly as much as three- quarters
of infectious disease. (l2) In Bangladesh itself, an estimated 60% of children who
die under the age of five, die as a result of diarrhoea, and in India it is thought
that acute diarhoeal diseases alone take 1.5 million lives each year. ""
Respiratory infections are major problems throughout the Third World. During
the 1970s pneumonia and bronchitis were the main causes of death recorded in
Tanzania and Nepal.