Dear Arthur and Listfriends,

As you all know, it is very hard to have some good reliable numbers about PWP's. In the time I lived in Holland, working on the Information Bank, I tried to get a good overview of this. I can only tell that according to my not as good memory as before, that the numbers differ very much per 1000 inhabitants. Holland has about 35,000 patients at a total of 16,500,000 people. That  is about 0.2%) of the total population.  I remember that there have been some articles published about investigations in a few big cities in Europe, where people were questioned about diseases. The percentage of that investigation was in at least one of the cities close to the number of 0.2%. In general the percentage was much higher than the national levels.

I also remember that there were estimations of the number of patients in 2005 in Western Europe. That numbers were much higher than the 500,000 mentioned.

As far as my knowledge reaches, and I am sure that there are people who know the eact numbers, has the USA a total of 276,000,000 people. 0.2 % means that there are about 600,000 pwp's in the USA. Europe however, with about 650,000,000 people has then 1,300,000 pwp's. 

Maybe that the density of industry or the level of pollution or the use of fertilizers or whatever has influence on this numbers. I am sure that there are many factors that influence the  numbers.

Am I making any sense? I am dizzy from all those numbers myself.  I am sorry if  I made you even more confused, but the numbers just don't seem right.

We are interested in the numbers in the near future. When will they decrease in stead of increase:)??

Warm greetings from Texas,


Kees Paap