Health aNd Fitness Guide

Smoking-related diseases will kill about one million Indians a year by 2010. It could account for 20 per cent of all male deaths and 5 per cent of all female deaths in the 30 to 69 age group, says a study based on a nationwide survey of 1.1 million homes. There are about 120 million smokers in India. Around 30 per cent of men and 5 per cent of women in the 30-69 age group smoke either bidis or cigarettes. Men who smoke bidis shorten their lives by six years, and women by eight years. Men who smoke cigarettes lose ten years. “Smokers in India start later in life and smoke fewer cigarettes, or bidis, than those in Europe or America, but the risks are as extreme as in the west,” said Prabhat Jha, lead author of the study and professor at the University of Toronto. He said graphic warnings would be more effective in educating people about the dangers of smoking, as 50 per cent of smoking-related deaths were expected to be among poor, illiterate Indians. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was led by a team of doctors from India, Britain and Canada.