April 6, 2017.
According to Global Burden of Disease report, published in the scientific journal The Lancet, tobacco was responsible for the death of more than 6.4 million people in 2015. A figure that has been rising since the 1990s.
Tobacco continues to wreak havoc around the world
Awareness campaigns on the harmful effects of tobacco on health continue to multiply and yet the number of victims of smoking has increased in recent years. In any case, this is what the Global Burden of Disease report reveals. According to this work, the number of people dying from tobacco increased by 4.7% between 1990 and 2015. It should still be noted that half of the victims live in Russia, China, India or the United States.
In 2015, 1 in 4 men and 1 in 20 women smoked daily, while in 1990, 1 in 3 men and 1 in 12 women smoked daily. What is complex to understand is that the proportion of smokers has significantly decreased across the world, even as the number of smokers has increased. This is due to global demographic changes.
Some countries more affected than others
In France, in 2013, 73,000 deaths were linked to smoking, according to the French Institute for Public Health Surveillance (InVS). 8 out of 10 French people have currently tried a cigarette and just over a third of the French population between the ages of 15 and 75 smokes. But if the trend is downward in France, in certain developing countries, the number of smokers is exploding. Currently, tobacco is the cause of one in ten deaths worldwide.
” The death rate from smoking in low- and middle-income countries is likely to be very high in the years to come », Laments John Britton, a specialist in the issue in The Lancet.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of smokers in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to increase by 50% by 2025 compared to 2010. Half a billion people could die prematurely from tobacco in the years to come.
Marine Rondot
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