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DHAKA
(Reuters) - Tuberculosis and malaria, once believed under
control, are killing millions of people in Southeast Asian
countries, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official said
on Monday.
"TB
and Malaria, which were once considered to have been brought
under control, are (now) rampant ... in developing countries
and specifically in our region," Dr Uton Muchtar Rafei,
WHO regional director in Southeast Asia, told a Dhaka health
conference. The three-day conference on tuberculosis and
malaria, attended by about 50 parliamentarians from 10 Southeast
Asian countries, was opened by Bangladesh Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina. "An estimated 40 percent of the population
is infected with TB in our region and more than 1.5 million
people died of TB last year," Rafei said. "The
poor are more than twice as likely to get TB than non-poor.
Globally,
95 percent of TB cases occur in poor countries," he
said. He said an estimated 25 million people suffered from
malaria and over 1.25 billion people were at risk of contracting
malaria in the region.
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