Future tobacco deaths may rise appreciably as girls smoke more – UN agency

Projected deaths from tobacco use worldwide, which at present kills 4.9 million people every year, could rise appreciably in light of a new report showing that young girls are smoking cigarettes almost as much as young boys, the United Nations health agency reported today.

The World Health Organization (WHO) called on national governments to address the problem now through gender-specific programmes since the new findings, the result of the largest global survey on adolescents and tobacco ever, undermine previous death projections based on current patterns of tobacco use among adults, where women are only about one-fourth as likely as men to smoke cigarettes.

“These findings could appreciably raise the projection of tobacco related deaths per year,” Vera da Costa e Silva, project manager for WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative told the 12th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Helsinki, Finland. “National governments can help address this now through gender sensitive education and awareness programmes.”

Results also show that girls and boys are using non-cigarette tobacco products such as spit tobacco, bidis, and water pipes at similar rates, and that these rates are often as high or higher than youth cigarette smoking rates.

The survey, the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), studied tobacco use by more than one million adolescents from over 150 countries and is a collaborative effort of WHO and its regional offices, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, the Canadian Public Health Association, other international agencies and individual countries.

“The data from this report have major implications for tobacco control,” said Charles W. Warren, CDC’s lead scientist on the GYTS. “First, programmes specific to gender must be developed which emphasize the serious health consequences of tobacco use, especially the risk of poor reproductive health and health risks to infants exposed to tobacco toxins during pregnancy.

“Second, the widespread use of other tobacco products in addition to cigarettes in many countries means that tobacco control programs must be broad in scope,” he added.