A new study revealed that more than one in 10 deaths in the world are caused due to smoking in 2015 and over 50% of them occurred in just four countries of the world, one of which was India. Worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, smoking prevalence decreased by almost a third– from 29.4%to 15%– and presently one in four men worldwide smoke, as do one in nearly 20 women (5.4 per cent).
To be exact, according to the latest estimates in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study published in medical journal The Lancet said that over 11% of 6.4 million deaths worldwide in the year 2015 was caused by smoking. And China, India, and Indonesia, the three leading countries with male smokers, accounted for 51.4 percent of the world’s male smokers in 2015.
India has 11.2 percent of the world’s total smokers.
It further elaborated that deaths caused by smoking have increased by 4.7% in 2015 compared to that in the year 2005. It claims that smoking is one of the biggest death threats and the second highest cause of disability.
“In 2015, 11.5 percent of global deaths (6 4 million) were attributable to smoking worldwide, of which 52.2 percent took place in four countries – China, India, the USA, and Russia),” the study said. “The USA, China and India, which were the leading three countries in a total number of female smokers, accounted for only 27 3 percent of the world’s female smokers,” it said. While Indonesia, Bangladesh and Philippines don’t show a significant trend in reduction of male smokers since 1990; India, Germany and Philippines had no decrease in the number of female smokers.
The estimates are based on smoking habits in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2015. With the growing and ageing population, the risk of tobacco smoking is raising, this calls for serious attention in encouraging smokers in quitting the habit and stopping more people from starting it. The study further expresses that the increasing population growth has caused a rise in the number of overall smokers from 870.4 million in 1990 to 933.1 million in 2015.
Interestingly, the study said that Pakistan, Panama and India are the three countries with the most widely implemented tobacco control policies over the past one decade.
“NTCP was created to strengthen implementation and enforcement of the various provisions of COTPA at the state and district level. It has been rolled out in phases and currently covers about 40 percent of all districts in India,” the study said.
The 10 countries with the largest number of smokers in 2015 were China, India, Indonesia, USA, Russia, Bangladesh, Japan, Brazil, Germany and the Philippines.
“Despite more than half a century of unequivocal evidence of the harmful effects of tobacco on health, today, one in every four men in the world is a daily smoker.
“Smoking remains the second largest risk factor for early death and disability, and so to further reduce its impact we must intensify tobacco control (efforts),” said senior author Emmanuela Gakidou, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, USA
