According to the report, women in the Arab world lose more years of their life to disease than their male counterparts, even in countries with higher standards of living, which, it says, "is attributable to general lifestyles that discriminate against women".

ECONOMIST: Arab women are suffering, says a UN report

Male circumcision seems to limit the disease's spread.

ECONOMIST: The pope in Africa

While male and female mortality rates from cerebrovascular disease, such as strokes, have dropped significantly they have been the second highest in Western Europe for the last 55 years, with only Portugal worse.

BBC: Scottish mortality rate 'among highest in Western Europe'

Products based on marine organisms have already found their way onto the market and are now being prescribed to sufferers of asthma, tuberculosis, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cystic fibrosis and male sexual impotence, among others.

UNESCO: MEDIA SERVICES

Legionnaires' disease was also linked to the death of a male patient in 2007 and to the death of another man in March last year though inquests into both cases have yet to take place.

BBC: Legionella bacteria

Prostate cancer research director John Masters, professor of experimental pathology at University College, London, said that men of Afro-Caribbean descent are three times more likely to develop prostate cancer than the average male, while those with a father or son who has had the disease is twice as likely to be diagnosed.

BBC: NEWS | Health | 'I got fit to fight terminal cancer'

The more prevalent causes of death for male and female smokers were lung cancer and other respiratory diseases followed by heart disease, stroke, and vascular disease.

FORBES: The Smoking Gun: Women Catch Up To Men On Lung Cancer Risk