Asian health officials meet in Kathmandu

A three-day meeting of senior health officials from ten South Asian and East Asian nations has begun in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu.

The World Health Organisation, which is organising the meeting, says urgent reforms are needed to provide even basic health care to the millions of people living below the poverty line in these countries.

The regional director of the WHO Uton Muchtar Rafei said that tuberculosis and malaria have re-emerged in many Asian countries and that AIDS was also an increasing problem for the region.

He said widespread poverty and illiteracy were to blame for the lack of healthcare. Nearly forty percent of the world's poorest people live across Asia.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service