One billion deaths expected from tobacco

According to the American Cancer Society, the way things are going tobacco will kill as many as 1 billion people this century.

The new Cancer Atlas and updated Tobacco Atlas were launched at the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) World Cancer Congress 2006, in Washington, D.C., this week.

The atlases which are published with support from the Union, WHO and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, declare that reducing tobacco use would have the greatest affect on global cancer rates.

In 2002, there were an estimated 11 million new cancer cases and nearly 7 million deaths worldwide but if action is taken now, two million lives can be saved each year by 2020 and 6.5 million by 2040.

The 1 billion estimate is 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, say public health officials and tobacco accounts for one in five cancer deaths, or 1.4 million deaths worldwide each year.

According to the Cancer Atlas lung cancer remains the major cancer among the 10.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed each year and reducing tobacco use would have the greatest affect on global cancer rates.

According to the Tobacco Atlas an estimated 1.25 billion men and women smoke cigarettes and even if smoking rates decline worldwide, there will be a constant or even slightly increasing number of smokers due to population increases.

The Tobacco Atlas says that tobacco is the only consumer product proven to kill more than half its regular users, with more than half of those deaths occurring between the ages of 30 and 69.

If adult cigarette consumption is reduced by just 50 percent worldwide, more than 300 million needless deaths would be averted in the next 50 years.

John Seffrin, Ph.D., chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society and immediate past president of UICC, says the atlases will be an indispensable resource for health professionals and policy makers who are concerned about the state of cancer and tobacco use around the world.