Number of smokers unlikely to change
Print Edition
SMOKER numbers are declining in many parts of the world, but upward trends in African and Mediterranean countries mean the global total will not change much over the next 10 years, researchers said yesterday.
The United Nations’s World Health Organization estimates that about 6 million people die around the world every year from smoking-related causes — more than 5 million from direct tobacco use and the rest from secondhand smoke.
About 80 percent of the world’s 1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries, it said.
An analysis published in The Lancet medical journal of trends in more than 170 countries, said smoking prevalence among men fell in 72 percent of countries measured in the decade 2000-10. Among women, a decline was observed in 88 percent of countries.
WHO member states agreed to a voluntary target of reducing tobacco use by 30 percent worldwide by 2025 from 2010 levels, the document said.
But on current trends, “only 37 (21 percent) countries are on track to achieve their targets for men and 88 (49 percent) are on track for women,” it said.
Rapid rises in Africa and the eastern Mediterranean will cancel many of the gains, and projections are for “an estimated 1.1 billion current tobacco smokers in 2025,” it said.
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