DHAKA, Dec 11 (AFP) - Lack of safe drinking water is the main cause of infectious diseases in the Pacific Rim while HIV/AIDS has overtaken other once widespread illnesses in the region, experts said here Thursday.
"One of the major challenges that we are facing every day is the supply of clean water for the prevention of diarrhoeal diseases in the country," Bangladeshi Health Minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said at the start of a two-day conference on "Emerging Infectious Diseases in the Pacific Rim" here.
"Urban poor are the worst hit by diarrhoea as more than 40 percent do not have access to a reliable source of piped water, with children tragically bearing the brunt of the health consequences," he said.
Nearly four billion people worldwide fall prey to diarrhoea annually, of whom 2.2 million are children, the minister said. Diarrhoea dehydrates the body and can be fatal unless treated quickly.
Participants from 10 countries, including the United States, Japan, India, Malaysia and Vietnam along with the World Health Organisation, are attending the conference sponsored by the US-Japan Cooperative Program.
The US ambassodor to Bangladesh, Harry Keels Thomas, said a new strain of cholera had appeared in India and Bangladesh in 1992 and now affected 11 countries in Southeast Asia.
"Many believe it is only a matter of time before this new strain will extend to other regions resulting in the eighth global pandemic," he warned.
Japanese ambassador Matushiro Horiguchi told the conference infectious diseases continued to be a serious threat for people in the Asia-Pacific region.
"It is thus a threat to human security," he said.
Warning of a possible re-emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), Matushiro said there was no room for complacency and Japan was determined to fight the spread of the infectious disease.
SARS is believed to have surfaced in southern China in late 2002.
The pneumonia-like disease killed 774 people worldwide and infected more than 8,000 before abating in the middle of this year, thanks to tough health controls in the absence of any cure or a vaccine.
Bangladeshi army Major General Matiur Rahman said neither infectious skin diseases nor tuberculosis were any longer major health problems for the Pacific region and that HIV/AIDS had taken their place as a major threat.
"Availability of drugs has contributed to the control of diarrhoea to some extent along with tuberculosis, typhoid or malaria, but we have to evolve ways to control and prevent diseases spread by water," Rahman told AFP on the sidelines of the conference.
"HIV/AIDS also needs to be addressed in Bangladesh now because the number of people down with the disease is low compared to other countries," added Rahman, an expert on infectious diseases.
Although Bangladesh has only 363 registered AIDS patients, 115 of these were reported in the past 12 months, a rise of nearly 50 percent, according to latest figures.
Experts said providing safe drinking water in Bangladesh has become more difficult in recent years due to arsenic contamination in many parts of the impoverished country, with some 80 million of its 130 million population affected.
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