As the health of the nation improves, people appear to be feeling sicker, a doctor suggested today.

In a report in the British Medical Journal, Dr Iona Heath, a GP, says 70% of the UK population take medicine to treat or prevent ill-health or to enhance well-being,

"How can this level of medicine-taking be appropriate in a population which, by all objective measures, is healthier than ever before in history?" she writes.

Dr Heath suggests money should be diverted from drug treatment for anxious but fundamentally healthy people in rich countries to tackling treatable diseases in poor nations. She proposes taxing the sale of preventive drugs in rich countries in order to fund drug purchases in the developing world.

Dr Heath today added to a warning earlier this month from the Commons Health Select Committee that the use of medical drugs in the UK was getting out of hand. Adverse reactions to drugs account for 4% of bed capacity in the NHS and cost about £466m a year.

"As the overall health of a population increases, more money can be made from selling healthcare interventions for the healthy majority than for the sick minority," she writes.

"In rich countries, more money is now invested in research into the prevention of disease than into its treatment."

Dr Heath says the more people are exposed to modern preventative care, the more they report themselves as being ill.

She refers to a study that compared people living in India's poorest state, Bihar, with US residents. It found that self-reporting of illness was very low in Bihar, but very high in the US.

"It seems that the more people are exposed to doctors and contemporary healthcare, including the rhetoric of preventive care, the sicker they feel," Dr Heath writes.