Smoking will kill 10 lakh in India every year: Study TOI

February 14, 2008

Times of india reports:

NEW DELHI: Smoking will kill 10 lakh people in the country annually from 2010. Consumption of tobacco in any form - cigarettes, bidis or gutkha - will be the primary cause behind one in five of all male deaths and one in 20 of all female deaths within the country.

Shockingly, nearly 70% of these one million deaths - seven lakh people - will die young and in their prime. Over 50% of the tobacco deaths will occur in illiterate men or women, with 80% of them residing in rural India.

While men who smoke cigarettes will lose over 10 years of life, those who smoke bidis will lose about six years. Women bidi smokers, on the other hand, will lose eight years of their productive life.

These are some of the findings of A Nationally Representative Case-Control Study of Smoking and Death in India - the most exhaustive study of smoking in the country.

Published in the February 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine , the study was jointly conducted by scientists from India, Canada and the UK.

According to the study, smoking only a few (1-7) bidis a day raised mortality risks by 25% while an equal number of cigarettes a day doubled the risk.

The study also found that among men, about 61% of those who smoke would die at ages 30-69 compared with 41% of otherwise similar non-smokers. Among women, 62% of those who smoke will die between 30-69 compared with only 38% of non-smokers.

Lead author Prof Prabhat Jha of the Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR), Canada, said the findings, especially the mortality rate due to smoking, came as a surprise since smokers in India start at a later age than those in Europe or America and smoke far lesser.

Jha said: " Through this study, we found that smoking has been a very democratic killer. Indians from all across the country have perished due to smoking. India is in the midst of a catastrophic epidemic of smoking deaths. "

According to Jha, it was high time Indians realised that there was nothing called safe smoking. " Even modest smoking increases risk of mortality tremendously. By 2010, one in every 10 deaths in India will be due to smoking. While smoking related heart attacks was the main killer among urban Indians, TB was most prevalent among smokers in rural India, " Jha added.

Union health minister A Ramadoss said: " Demographically, India, home to 60 crore young people below the age of 30, is the youngest nation in the world. They are our national assets and they must be protected against tobacco. We are strengthening our Tobacco Regulatory Authority to enforce strict anti-tobacco laws. "