The Wednesday (22 June) edition of <i>Al-Khabar</i> wrote that according to the annual report of the World Heath Organization for 2004, an Algerian male looses 7.9 years of his life due to diseases he is infected by, while this rate increases to 9.9 years in reference to women. The World Heath Organization assessed that in Algeria there is a serious problem in the level of hygiene in hospitals and in other medical institutions, both owned by the private and the public sectors. As a result, one out of four patients is expected to be infected by contagious disease.
As for the frequent diseases in Algeria, the most prominent among them are allergy diseases; their frequency is affected by the high level of air pollution in the cities. Some 3 millions Algerians are infected by allergy diseases, 1.2 out of them are having asthma.
As for smoking, data shows that are 6.8 million men smokers (44% of total men population) and 1 million women smokers (6% of total women population) in Algeria. Smoking causes to the death of 17,000 persons annually out of all diseases connected to it. More than 30,000 new cancer cases are registered every year, and 20,000 are death because of cancer annually.
In addition, there are 20,000 registered tuberculosis cases, and more than 300,000 cases of hepatitis C. Some 9 million people, who constitute more than 35,3% of the above 18 years population in Algeria, suffer from high blood pressure, while 12 million persons suffer from rheumatism.
The report shows also that baby death rates did not changed during the last decade and stay higher than 50 for 1,000, while mother death rates are also high in various regions, especially in the south, 200 per 100,000 mothers.
The number of Algerians living under the poverty line increased significantly, since it reaches more than 23% compared to 12% in 1988. Chronic and poverty diseases are spread more quickly than contagious diseases, and mental diseases become among the prominent ones, since they are estimated by more than 460 per 100,000 persons, while the number rises to 610 per 100,000 men.
