Indonesia, the hardest-hit country, is the most populous Muslim nation.

Indonesia, with 39 deaths, is close to surpassing Vietnam as the hardest-hit country with 42.

Indonesia was the hardest-hit country, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand.

The lack of social welfare programs made the hardest-hit countries, like Indonesia, "fertile ground for breeding social unrest."

Another is India, the world's hardest-hit country.

While Haiti, with an infection rate of more than 6 percent, has gained attention as the region's hardest-hit country, the disease is by no means confined there, officials said.

Australia's dependence on agricultural and industrial exports meant it was one of the hardest-hit countries in the Western world.

For Belarus, the hardest-hit country, the equivalent of 31 annual budgets would be needed to establish some degree of control over the impact on man and nature.

Citigroup, for example, expects GDP across the 17-member area to contract by 1.2%, with much sharper falls in the hardest-hit countries.

One common vulnerability in many of the hardest-hit countries was that like Japan in the late 1980's, they had enjoyed speculative bubbles fueled by cheap credit.