Since 1990, key health indicators in Mongolia like life expectancy and infant and child mortality have steadily improved, both due to social changes and to improvement in the health sector. Echinococcosis was one of the commonest surgical diagnoses in the 1960s, but now has been greatly reduced.[1] Yet, adult health deteriorated during the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century and mortality rates increased significantly.[2] Smallpox, typhus, plague, poliomyelitis, and diphtheria were eradicated by 1981.