Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) faculty members recently met with the Hungarian Health Minister and other government officials to discuss strategies to reduce smoking in Hungary.
Laszlo Mechtler, MD, Department of Neurology at RPCI and President of the Hungarian Medical Association of America, led the delegation. “With one in two tobacco users dying prematurely from tobacco use, we need to be more aggressive in our actions to address the tobacco problem in Hungary,” he said. Tamas Szekely, MD, Hungarian Minister of Health, added, “Hungary has high smoking rates and consequently high rates of lung cancer and heart disease that result from tobacco use.”
Hungary was among the first countries in the world to ratify the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which obligates governments to adopt and effectively implement a series of tobacco control polices that will rapidly reduce demand for tobacco. However, according to K. Michael Cummings, PhD, Director of RPCI's tobacco research program, “Hungary has lagged in its implementation of a comprehensive smoke-free law, such as the one adopted in New York State.”
In fact, Hungary's smokers include 30% of all its physicians – 12% of all pulmonologists – and even the nation's Minister of Health, Dr. Szekely. “How can the people of Hungary quit smoking when its intellectuals and healthcare leaders smoke?” asks Mechtler.
To kick-start Hungary's tobacco reduction program, RPCI faculty organized a two-day symposium, “The Tobacco Epidemic in Hungary,” which was held in August in Budapest. The symposium featured 71 lectures on topics ranging from tobacco's deleterious health effects to new treatments for tobacco addiction and ways to implement tobacco-control policies.