23 Jun 2005 12:32:06 GMT
Source: Reuters

LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) - Africa is ravaged by preventable and curable illnesses but healthcare is often non-existent, sub-standard or too expensive for all but an elite.

Following is a list of some of the continent's major health problems:

* AIDS - Sub-Saharan Africa, with just over 10 percent of the world's population, is home to more than 60 percent of all HIV positive people, about 25.4 million people. An estimated 3.1 million were infected during the past year.

- AIDS killed approximately 2.3 million in Africa in 2004.

- Women have a greater risk of becoming infected than men. Almost 57 percent of adults living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are women and girls.

* DIARRHOEA - Caused by dysentery, cholera and lesser-known infections from bacterial, viral or parasitic organisms.

- Kills around 2.2 million people each year, mostly through dehydration. Each year there are approximately four billion cases of diarrhoea worldwide.

- Around 1.1 billion people lack access to improved water sources and 2.4 billion have no basic sanitation. Diarrhoea due to infection is widespread throughout the developing world and diarrhoea in Africa is responsible for as many as 7.7% of all deaths.

* MALARIA - The mosquito-borne disease kills between 1 and 5 million each year, with 90 percent of deaths in Africa.

- Malaria kills an African child every 30 seconds.

- The disease is responsible for 20 percent of Africa's under-five mortality and 10 percent of the continent's overall disease burden.

* MARBURG - The Ebola-like disease, which is transmitted through body fluids, usually kills within days. Of the 386 people known to have been infected in the world's worst outbreak in Angola this year, 348 have died.

* MEASLES - The virus infects more than 30 million people each year, mostly children, and kills about 530,000.

- Africa and South and Southeast Asia account for 82 percent of global measles deaths. It costs $1 to immunise a child.

* POLIO - Six countries in the world were polio-endemic at the end of 2004, Nigeria and Niger in Africa. An additional six had re-established transmission (lasting more than 6 months) of imported polio: Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Mali and Sudan.

- Following an eradication initiative by WHO, polio cases have been drastically reduced from an estimated 350,000 cases worldwide in 1988 to 1,267 cases in 2004, up from 784 the previous year. The majority of new cases were in Nigeria where vaccinations were temporarily banned in some areas.

* TUBERCULOSIS - The respiratory disease kills 2 million a year and is a frequent killer of people with AIDS. African states affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic have experienced an annual 10 percent rise in TB cases.

- Nine of the 22 countries hardest hit by TB are in Africa, including Nigeria, Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya. - Most victims of TB, a curable disease spread by coughing and sneezing, live in developing countries. An estimated 1.7 million died from the disease in 2003. Nearly one-third were in Africa.

Sources: Reuters/WHO/UNAIDS/CDC