Smoking claims 30,000 to 40,000 lives annually in Vietnam: WHO
HANOI - Smoking claims 30,000 to 40,000 lives in Vietnam every year and costs the country hundreds of millions of dollars in treatment for sick smokers, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said.
"Between 30,000 and 40,000 people are killed by tobacco use every year. This is expected to increase to 48,000 to 67,000 in 2023," a WHO study revealed Friday.
Vietnam has one of the highest male smoking rates in the world with more than 56 percent of men smoking, it said.
Social pressures against a habit seen as unfeminine is considered responsible for only 1.8 percent of women smoking.
The report also showed that households with smokers in Vietnam spend three times more money on tobacco than on education and healthcare.
A 1997 Vietnam health ministry survey found that 50 percent of men and 3.4 percent of women smoke.
The government has banned all forms of tobacco promotion and advertising at sporting and cultural events, as well as smoking at schools, in a bid to discourage the habit among young people.
Every year millions of cigarettes are smuggled into the country through neighbouring Laos, Cambodia and Thailand.
WHO's study underlines the link between tobacco addiction and poverty.
"Close to 60 percent of the total cigarettes smoked and 75 percent of smokers are from developing countries," it said.
"The poor tend to use more tobacco than the wealthier, and they suffer heavier health and economic burdens."
The organisation said that if nothing was done to curb the level of smoking it could kill more people in Vietnam in 2030 than AIDS , tuberculosis, road accidents and suicides combined.
Agence France Presse - March 26, 2004.
|