Smoking kills 40,000 Vietnamese people annually, or over 100 per day, local media reported, citing statistics from the World Health Organization.Without emergency intervention, the estimated number of deaths from tobacco-related diseases each year will increase to 70,000 by 2030, Deputy Minister of Health Nguyen Viet Tien said at the meeting held in Hanoi on May 26 in response to the World No Tobacco Day (May 31) and the National No Tobacco Week (May 25-31) with the theme “tobacco and lung diseases”.
The meeting held in Hanoi on May 26 in response to the World No Tobacco Day (May 31) and the National No Tobacco Week (May 25-31). Photo: Nam Tran
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Passive smoking is also the cause of lung diseases in children, making them suffer from health problems in adulthood, Tien stressed.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco kills nearly six million people in the world annually, including more than five million people who have ever smoked and more than 600,000 people who do not smoke but suffer from passive smoking.
The number of people dying from tobacco is higher than the total number of deaths from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, WHO affirmed.
Not only seriously affecting health, tobacco also affects economy of people as well as the nation. The WHO estimates the cost of healthcare and poor labor productivity due to tobacco effects is US$1.4 trillion, equivalent to nearly 2% of global GDP.
WHO also emphasized the pollution arising in the process of producing, transporting and distributing tobacco products. Statistics showed that tobacco industry emits nearly four million tons of CO2 into the environment every year.
Moreover, waste from the process contains more than 7,000 toxic chemicals that pollute the environment . Smoking can release thousands of tons of carcinogens, toxic substances and greenhouse gases, WHO added.
