Tobacco May Kill 1 Billion This Century: CDC
Reacting to Bangladesh's release of its first Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), the U.S. agency said containing the use of tobacco "is one of the most important public health priorities of our time."
CDC reports that Bangladesh released its first Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) results recently, saying this scientifically valid, standard survey has only recently been used to measure adults' tobacco use. besides Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Philippines, Poland, Russian Federation, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, and Vietnam participated in the first round of GATS, which CDC oversees.
Results from this phase include these:
- 44.7 percent of men, 1.5 percent of women, and 23 percent overall (21.9 million adults) currently smoke tobacco.
- 26.4 percent of men, 27.9 percent of women, and 27.2 percent overall (25.9 million adults) currently use smokeless tobacco.
- 11.5 million adults are exposed to tobacco smoke in the workplace.
- 52.9 percent of smokers and 47.9 percent of smokeless users had been advised to quit by a health care provider in the past 12 months.
"Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of premature disease and death in the world and kills up to half of those who use it," CDC observed. "In the 20th century, the tobacco epidemic killed 100 million people worldwide; during the 21st century, it could kill one billion. Containing this epidemic is one of the most important public health priorities of our time."
A fact sheet summarizing the results from Bangladesh can be found at http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/global/gats/countries/sear/fact_sheets/bangladesh/.
Funding for GATS is provided by the Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use (partners include the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, CDC, CDC Foundation, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, WHO, and the World Lung Foundation).