Social Determinants of Infectious Diseases in South Asia

Table 1

Comparison of total number of deaths attributable to risk factors between high-income countries and low-and-middle income countries (LMICs) in 2001. It is clear that, in LMICs, people are more at risk of dying from the causes which are influenced by lower socioeconomic status and lack of awareness about these diseases.

Risk factor	LMICs		High-income countries
	Total number of deaths	Percent	Total number of deaths	Percent
Childhood underweight	3,630	7.5	0	0
Poor sanitation and unclean water	1,563	3.2	4	<0.1
Smoking	3,340	6.9	1,462	18.5
Unsafe sex	2,819	5.8	32	0.4
Contaminated injections	407	0.8	4	<0.1

Source: Global Disease Burden, 2001.