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India faces 1 million smoking-related deaths in 201021 February, 2008 A study has revealed that there are currently about 120 million smokers in the country and the rate of tobacco-linked deaths is increasing at about 3% a year. The study, conducted by Dr Prabhat Jha, of the Centre for Global Health at the University, Toronto, Canada, and colleagues, said that in 2010 alone, smoking will lead to nearly 1 million deaths in India. Further, 70% of those deaths will occur in men and women aged between 30 to 69. The study has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study was conducted on a nationally representative sample of 1.1 million Indian households. Dr. Jha and colleagues studied the prevalence of smoking among 33,000 deceased women and 41,000 deceased men. This was then contrasted with the prevalence of smoking among 35,000 living women and 43,000 living men. Though smoking in India is not as bad as smoking in the United States, the impact on mortality is similar. Indians typically smoke bidi, a mini-cigarette of sorts wrapped in a leaf, which contains only about 25% of the tobacco found in a US cigarette. The study by Dr Prabhat Jha and colleagues revealed the following grim facts about India: Roughly 5% of women aged 30 to 69
were smokers as were 37% of men in
that age group. Tuberculosis was found to be the most likely cause of high mortality among both women and men smokers. Smoking was associated with an
6-year reduction in median survival
and a 8-year reduction in median
survival for men and women,
respectively. In 2010, 930,000 adult deaths in India willl be caused by smoking. The authors of the study said they
measured only a few variables and they
said because of lack of data,
unmeasured factors might have affected
the relative risks.
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