In the face of really alarming situation that globally, someone still dies every 6.5 seconds of a tobacco-related disease, and tobacco consumption is still rising in several parts of the world particularly in poor and developing countries- World No Tobacco Day 2004 is being observed under the auspices of World Health Organisation (WHO) in various parts of the world including Pakistan on Monday, May 31 with a pledge to continue efforts for creation of Tobacco free society.
This year's theme for the Day is "Tobacco & Poverty- a Vicious Circle". To mark the day, walks, seminars, scientific sessions, symposiums, and special functions will be held across the country. However, according to a spokesman of the Pakistan Chest Society, various functions will be held in Lahore in a bid to create awareness among people about harmful effects of smoking.
This is the 18th year that countries around the world would join WHO in celebrating World No Tobacco Day.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) launches this year's campaign for World No Tobacco Day with the slogan: Tobacco and Poverty: a vicious circle, stressing the enormous economic costs of tobacco use and cultivation to families, communities and countries.
The slogan 'a vicious circle' explains the inextricable link that exists between tobacco and poverty, and how the use of tobacco, especially by poorer people who consume this product the most, can cause harmful consequences to their already precarious economies and income.
It may be mentioned that last year, WHO's 192 Member States took a decisive step by adopting the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Its provisions establish the directions policies can take to reduce the damage tobacco does to health and to economies. So far, 118 countries and the European Community have signed the Convention, and once the Framework Convention comes into force it will become a powerful means of controlling this entirely unnecessary threat to health and welfare.
According to experts, the World Bank estimates that in high-income countries up to 15 percent of the health care budget is spent on dealing with tobacco-related diseases. Within countries, tobacco consumption is inversely related to the socio-economic level: it goes up as the standard of living goes down. Higher smoking prevalence means that it is the poorer who bear more of the burden of both the health costs and the economic costs of tobacco.
WHO notes that the tobacco epidemic is still expanding, especially in developing countries where, currently, 84 percent of the smokers live.
Tobacco use kills 4.9 million people each year, and this toll it is expected to double in the next 20 years. At current rates, the total number of tobacco users is expected to rise to 1.7 billion by 2025 from 1.3 billion now, they said.
According to experts, more than 22 million people in Pakistan used tobacco in one form or the other, and nearly 99,000 people die of various diseases related to smoking every year.