Pitifully low spending on health care, surging tobacco consumption, widespread depression and anxiety, shockingly high suicide rates among disaffected youngsters, wanton neglect of girls and women and unethical sales practices by the drug industry are among the problems that they outline.

"Half the people in South Asia live below the poverty line," says the British Medical Journal (BMJ), in a special issue next Saturday devoted to the region's health.

"The region is also home to a third of the world's child deaths and almost two-thirds of the global burden of malnutrition."

The BMJ angrily points the finger at the region's levels of spending on health.

While the United States spends around 4,000 dollars per person per year on health care, spending in Nepal is just three dollars a head, and in India and Pakistan it is hardly better, at four dollars per head.

In Pakistan, with 152 million people the sixth most populous country in the world, psychiatric problems appear to be widespread, according to research published in the BMJ's rival, The Lancet.

It analysed 20 studies of adult mental health in Pakistan and found that, on average, 34 percent of people interviewed had depressive disorders and anxiety, especially people with financial or relationship problems.

The figure must be treated with caution, because most of the data came from only two provinces, Punjab and Singh, the authors say.