The director-general of the World Health Organisation, Gro Harlem Brundtland, says poverty in the former Eastern bloc and Central Asia has contributed to the first decline in life expectancy in Europe in fifty years.

Speaking to the BBC, Mrs Brundtland said the gap between rich and poor was getting wider and she warned that unless more money was made available, mortality rates would increase.

Mrs Brundtland is to address representatives of the WHO in Copenhagen today on the results of a report which revealed that diseases such as diptheria and tuberculosis, thought to be in decline, have begun to re-emerge in Europe.

The report said Europe was still the healthiest region in the world apart from Japan.

But it said heavy drinking had led to a life expectancy among Russian men of fifty-six, well below the pension age.