[The third epoch, the third world and the third millennium].

The UN projection of the worlds population forecasts a minimum of 7.1 billion to a maximum of 7.8 billion people for the next 20 years meaning about 700 million more people during this time span. In contrast to the rapid growth of the populations of Asia and Africa the populations of Europe will be stagnating or even decreasing. The aging of the population will also increase in Europe and North America: people of age 65 or older made up 13.7% of the population in Europe in 1990 and their share will grow to 22.4% in 2025. 18 of the 20 countries with the highest proportion of older people are in Europe with 13.2-17.9% of the total population. The proportion of women in postmenopause was 220 million in the world in 1950. By the year 2030 there will be 1200 million such women 912 million of them in the Third World countries. The rapid increase of older people in developing countries will probably augment the numbers of those living in poverty. The epidemiological dimension in these countries is that the causes of death are infectious and parasitic diseases (41.4% vs. 1.2% in developed countries) circulatory system diseases (10.7% vs. 46.7% in developed countries) and malignant neoplasms (8.9% vs. 21.6% in developed countries). Every year approximately 50 million people die globally: 39 million in developing countries and 11 million in developed countries. The UN projects that by the year 2000 7.1 million cancer deaths will occur globally of which 4.3 million will be in developing countries. In the developing world there will be more malignant cancers of the gastrointestinal tract than of the reproductive tract except for cervical cancer: in 1990 there were 183000 deaths caused by it in developing countries vs. 32000 in developed countries. Most disability in the Third World in older women is caused by such diseases as cerebrovascular and ischemic heart conditions chronic respiratory ailments diabetes and tuberculosis.