Health and mortality

Life expectancy in Kazakhstan is fairly low: fifty-six years for men and sixty-seven years for women in 2004, according to the World Health Organization (2006, http://www.who.int/countries/kaz/en/). Healthy life expectancy at birth in 2002 was 52.6 years for men and 59.3 years for women. Under-five child mortality in 2002 was eighty-three per 1,000 live births for males and sixty-two for females. Different agencies within the country report different numbers for maternal mortality, and there are to date no official statistics. The Kazakhstan Ministry of Health reports that there were 75.8 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1990, while the Agency for Statistics reports fifty-five. Both groups report a decrease between 1990 and 2004, to 36.9 deaths per 100,000, although the number is still considered unreasonably high, particularly in light of the fact that nearly 100% of births in Kazakhstan are attended by health professionals. This indicates an issue with the quality of obstetric care.

One of the biggest health challenges confronting Kazakhstan since the dissolution of the Soviet Union is drug use. Because of its location on the drug trafficking route between the major drug producers of Southwest Asia to major drug-consuming regions such as Russia and Eastern Europe, Kazakhstan has become a major link on the route. According to the Silk Road Studies Program and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute's "Country Factsheet, Eurasian Narcotics: Kazakhstan 2003" (2004), Kazakhstan's customs union with Russia, Belarus, and the Ukraine permits the passage of closed containers without inspection across borders, making it especially attractive to smugglers. Kazakhstan, however, does not just provide a passage through which illicit drugs can easily pass. The country is also becoming a bigger producer of heroin and cannabis for use within its own borders. As in all countries with a high rate of intravenous drug use, HIV infection is on the rise in Kazakhstan. The Silk Road Studies fact sheet reports that as many as 3% of the country's citizens are believed to be intravenous drug users, and about 23,000 people are believed to be HIV-positive, with 84% of those infected being intravenous drug users. Suicide is a major cause of death among the HIV-positive population of Kazakhstan.

Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan is a small, almost entirely mountainous, landlocked country of about five million people. Historically, the people of the region were nomadic, but when it was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1924, Kyrgyzstan was converted to an agricultural-manufacturing lifestyle and economy. By the time the Central Asian republics were granted independence in 1991, Kyrgyzstan's manufacturing sector relied almost entirely on the Soviet Union's military-industrial complex. With its collapse, Kyrgyzstan's manufacturing sector also fell apart, which left its economy in ruins.

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