The United Nations on Monday called for health spending in developing countries to double to $60 billion a year by 2010, designating it a locomotive to help haul these nations out of poverty.

David Nabarro, director for sustainable development and healthy environments at the UN World Health Organization (WHO), said governments should consider health care to be an investment, not a cost.

Citing a report by the WHO's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health, he said an additional 30 billion dollars a year spent on health in developing countries, from the present level of 30 billion, would lead to "a six-fold increase in the value of production and eight million lives saved."

Rich nations, he hoped, would meet at least half of the additional 30 billion required, with the rest coming from national governments.

At present, wealthy countries provide six billion dollars in health aid through official development programs.

"This of course is a pretty significant increase on what's being spent at the moment, but the amount of external donor assistance required to reach this is equivalent to only 0.1 percent of the GDP (gross domestic product) of the world's rich nations," Nabarro said.

He told AFP that the extra spending should mostly be focused on Asia, which is the world's most populated continent and home to most of its poor, as well as on Africa, bearing the brunt of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Earlier, delegates speaking at the plenary session on Day One of the Earth Summit here said it was impossible to ignore the link between poverty and environmental damage on one side, and ill-health on the other.

Norwegian Environment Minister Borge Brende called on the summit to show "political will to break the vicious cycle.

A third of global diseases were caused by environmental degradation, with one in five children in poor segments of societies unable to reach the age of five mainly due to air and water pollution, he said.

World Bank health director Robert Hecht said "environmental health issues have fallen between the cracks" and called attention to provision of clean infrastructure as well as steps to tackle emerging health threats.

He said the Bank now listed smoking as a new epidemic that must be tackled before it leads to "enormous health damage" in developing nations in the next 10 to 15 years.

Scientists say damage to the environment and deep-rooted poverty are major causes of disease.

They include water-borne diseases such as cholera and diarrhea, which are spread by poor sanitation, as well as tuberculosis from living in damp, cramped housing.

Climate change inflicted by global warming is also expected to have an impact on health by spreading the geographical range of malarial mosquitoes, according to a report last year by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In Africa, the rampaging AIDS epidemic is having a dire economic impact, for millions of families are plunged into poverty when their wage-earner dies prematurely.AFP