ECONOMIC LEADERS FROM AROUND the world gathered in Hanoi, Vietnam for the 14 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in November of 2006. With this year’s theme of “Towards a Dynamic Community for Sustainable Development and Prosperity,” the APEC community strived to make clear its support for the Doha Development Agenda. In addition, the forum emphasized the need to protect human secu...

The association between abdominal obesity and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) is now well recognized. Both problems are becoming more prevalent within the Asia-Pacific region, but there are substantial differences within and between countries. The strength of the temporal relationship between obesity and CVD in the region has led to the suggestion that obesity is the driving f...

Most pregnant women at risk of for infection with Plasmodium vivax live in the Asia-Pacific region. However, malaria in pregnancy is not recognised as a priority by many governments, policy makers, and donors in this region. Robust data for the true burden of malaria throughout pregnancy are scarce. Nevertheless, when women have little immunity, each infection is potentially fatal to the mother...

Twenty-one percent of the world's tuberculosis cases are found in the Western Pacific Region. The region has demonstrated a lower rate of decline in incidence than the regions of Africa, the Americas and Europe. Issues around drug resistance, human immunodeficiency virus and diabetes impact on the burden of tuberculosis disease in the Western Pacific Region. Australia has exhibited a low and re...

This paper was initiated by the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) after identifying the need for an in-depth synthesis and analysis of available literature and information on incentives for retaining health workers in the Asia-Pacific region. The objectives of this paper are to: 1. Highlight the situation of health workers in Pacific and Asian countries to gain a better u...

Energy poverty is widespread in Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Pacific. It is estimated that 70 percent of Pacific islander households do not have access to electricity, which is equivalent to access rates in sub-Saharan Africa and slightly below the average for low income countries. Pacific SIDS face unique challenges in expanding access to electricity, given that their populatio...

What are the problems?  Current food systems in the South-East Asian region are unsustainable in the context of both supply and demand of food.  The ‘double burden of disease’, where undernutrition and obesity coexist side-by-side, is a severe challenge in South-East Asia.  The proportion of underweight children in South-East Asia is 19 per cent, the third largest share after South Asia and ...

BACKGROUND The Asia-Pacific region is home to nearly half of the world's population. The region has seen a recent rapid increase in the prevalence of obesity, type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The present systematic review summarizes the recent prevalence and trends of Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) among adults in countries of the Asia-Pacific Region. METHODS Data on MetS in Asia-Pacifi...

This paper looks at multilateral processes in the ‘Asia-Pacific’ region and the impact of American foreign policy on them. The paper suggests that organizations like the AsiaPacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum have been made increasingly irrelevant as American policy becomes more bilateral and even unilateral, and as the very definition of the ‘Asia-Pacific’ becomes less certain as a con...

Taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott) is widely distributed in tropical and sub-tropical areas. However, its origin, diversification and dispersal remain unclear. While taro genetic diversity has been documented at the country and regional levels in Asia and the Pacific, few reports are available from Americas and Africa where it has been introduced through human migrations. We used eleven mic...