Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is a central Asian country with a coastline on the eastern side of the Caspian Sea. Home of the Turkmens since perhaps 2000 BCE, the region has been conquered by everyone from Alexander the Great to the Russians; in the early 20th Century, it became a Soviet republic. Turkmenistan was one of the last Soviet states to secede in 1991 and has had a somewhat rocky transition to independence. Turk-menistan's hope for a stable economic future rests in it's natural gas and hydrocarbon fields, with many believing that the construction of a pipeline stretching from China to the Caspian could break the current export monopoly held by the Russians.

The population of Turkmenistan is 5,100,000 and growing at 1.617 percent annually. The birth rate is 25.36 per 1,000 population and the death rate is 6.17 per 1,000. Like most Central Asian states, there is a outflow of citizens looking for better lives abroad, with about three people per 1,000 leaving the country. Median age is 22.3 years, with 40 percent of the population under the age of 15. life expectancy is 65.23 years for males and 71.54 years for females. Gross national income is $1,340, with 12 percent living on under $1 per day, and [Page 1691]58 percent living in poverty. Unemployment is 60 percent, and the average rate of inflation is 329 percent.

Statistics on healthcare within Turkmenistan are extremely suspect, according to the European Centre on Health of Societies in Transition (ECOHOST), a London-based research group. According to a detailed 2005 report, healthcare deteriorated dramatically in recent years, as the rule of president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov has become “increasingly authoritarian.”

Figures from the late 1990s indicate mortality rates from communicable diseases in Turkmenistan are six times those of the European Union, accounting for about 4 percent of all deaths. Viral hepatitis rates in 1997 were 22.4 per 100,000 people for hepatitis B and 325 cases per 100,000 for hepatitis A. UNAIDS puts the current adult prevalence rate for HIV/AIDS at 0.1 percent, with between 500–1,000 infections.

ECOHOST believes it has evidence that the Turkmen Ministry of Health and Medical Industry has been ordered not to mention tuberculosis, cholera, dysentery, and a number of other communicable diseases. It also believes a 2004 outbreak of plague was concealed by the government.

Non-communicable diseases accounts for around 88 percent of deaths in Turkmenistan, with cardiovascular disease as the main cause. In 1994. ischaemic heart disease was the cause of 587 out of every 100,000 deaths, compared with 418 per 100,000 in nearby states and 118 per 100,000 in the European Union. Digestive disease are also a major cause of mortality. Two-thirds of these deaths come from cirrhosis or chronic liver disease, stemming from the high level of viral hepatitis and alcohol abuse. Cancer deaths are low, but this may be as a result of under-reporting.

There are few reliable statistics on the current state of women's and children's health or mortality in Turkmenistan. The Niyazov government has reduced funding for medical care and increased user fees, pricing most of the poverty-stricken population out of care. On one day in March 2003, Niyazov dismissed 15,000 healthcare workers and replaced them with untrained military conscripts.

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