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Ten eyebrow-raising stats

A girl sells locally made cheese in Zinder, Southern Niger on 16 September 2007. Tugela Ridley/IRIN
    DAKAR

    Pause for thought: IRIN has trawled the 2010 World Health Statistics report to bring you 10 fascinating facts on global health.



  • Not the spreadable kind: In 43 low-income countries 40 percent more people had non-communicable diseases - including diabetes, heart disease and stroke - than infectious illnesses in 2004. Non-infectious diseases killed 33 million worldwide in 2004.



  • Sleepless in Swaziland: No under-five children slept under insecticide-treated bed nets to ward off malarial mosquitoes in Swaziland, whereas in Madagascar 60 percent of children did so, according to the countries’ most recent surveys conducted since 2000.



  • Midwifery in Uzbekistan: Uzbekistan is the only low-income country in the past decade to boast coverage of nurses and midwives similar to that in high-income countries - 108 nurses and/or midwives per 10,000 residents. Australia (109), Switzerland (110), Luxembourg (104) and Canada’s (100) are comparable.



  • Oil-rich, but doctor-poor: Equatorial Guinea, which in 2009 had the world’s 64th highest per capita income, and the highest in sub-Saharan Africa (World Bank), had the same number of doctors per 10,000 residents (3) as did Bangladesh, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Namibia, Togo, Sudan, Yemen and the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga.



  • Protected in the Pacific: Fewer than a quarter of women in Africa reported using contraception, while over 80 percent of women in the region WHO classifies as western Pacific used it. Chad had the world’s lowest contraceptive use at 2.8 percent.



  • Choking on fumes: Of the 20 countries worldwide where more than 95 percent of those surveyed reported using solid fuels (wood, coal, charcoal, crops) for indoor cooking - associated with higher rates of fatal respiratory diseases like pneumonia - six are in West Africa (not counting Benin, Gambia and Chad, which come within points of the highest threshold.)













    • One of Malabo's hundreds of slum areas.



    Photo: Rodrigo A. Nguema/IRIN

    Petrol dollars have not made it to parts of Equatorial Guinea's capital, Malabo (file photo)

    Measles: While 76 percent of one-year-olds in Africa on average were immunized against measles in 2008 versus 58 percent in 1990, these rates were 24 and 51 percent, respectively, in Somalia and Equatorial Guinea in 2008.



  • Slow on sanitation: Thirty percent of people in Africa used “improved sanitation facilities” - including a composting or flushing toilet, piped sewer systems, septic tanks, or latrines with open ventilation or concrete slabs - in 1990. Eighteen years later, the statistical equivalent of less than half an additional person joined them.



  • Under-weight children: Some four out of 10 under-five children are considered underweight in Niger, India and Yemen.



  • Youngest mothers: Almost two out of 10 girls aged 15-19 in Niger have given birth, followed by Afghanistan (1.5) and Bangladesh (1.3).



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    • This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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