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Uzbekistan
Health Conditions
According to experts, the most immediate impact of the environmental
situation in Uzbekistan is on the health condition of the population
(see Environmental Problems, this ch.). Although it is difficult
to establish a direct cause and effect between environmental problems
and their apparent consequences, the cumulative impact of these
environmental problems in Uzbekistan appears to have been devastating.
Frequently cited in Uzbekistan's press are increasing occurrences
of typhoid, paratyphoid, and hepatitis from contaminated drinking
water; rising rates of intestinal disease and cancers; and increased
frequency of anemia, dystrophy, cholera, dysentery, and a host
of other illnesses. One Russian specialist includes among the
ailments "lag in physical development," especially among children.
According to this observer, sixty-nine of every 100 adults in
the Aral Sea region are deemed to be "incurably ill." In 1990
life expectancy for males in all of Uzbekistan was sixty-four
years, and for females, seventy years. The average life span in
some villages near the Aral Sea in Karakalpakstan, however, is
estimated at thirty-eight years.
In the early 1990s, only an estimated 30 percent of women in
Uzbekistan practiced contraception of any kind. The most frequently
used method was the intrauterine device, distribution of which
began in a government program introduced in 1991. In 1991 the
average fertility rate was 4.1 children per woman, but about 200,000
of the women in the childbearing age range have ten or more children.
Infant mortality increased by as much as 49 percent between 1970
and 1986 to an average of 46.2 deaths per 1,000 live births. In
1990 the average rate of mortality before age one for the entire
country was sixty-five deaths per 1,000 live births. In the mid-1990s,
official data estimated the level of infant mortality in parts
of Karakalpakstan at 110 per 1,000 live births; unofficial estimates
put the level at twice that figure. In 1992 the national maternal
mortality rate was 65.3 per 100,000 live births, with considerably
higher rates in some regions.
According to the WHO, Uzbekistan reported one case of acquired
immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) in 1992, one in 1993, and none
in 1994. No treatment centers or AIDS research projects are known
to exist in Uzbekistan.
Data as of March 1996
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