THERE has been a lot of items in Philippine media lately related to the current campaign against the hazards of smoking to people’s health. Led by the World Health Organization (WHO), the campaign focuses mainly on the measures put in place by concerned governments that are designed to move smokers to abandon their addiction to nicotine which is dangerous to one’s health.
For example, to drive home their point that smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths, they have come up with the usual statistics on the number of deaths worldwide due to smoking. The figures vary from year to year, from country to country. But the annual death toll on this planet has been pegged at FIVE MILLION as of last count. It has been estimated that half of those who smoke today will end up dead. Sooner or later, what’s the difference?
The WHO reports that smoking is responsible for 90% of lung cancers, 75% of chronic bronchitis and emphysema, and 25% of ischemic heart disease.How does that translate to the actual situation in our own Davao City?
Take note: Based on hospital reports in Davao City, the number of persons who died due to cancer of the trachea, bronchus and lungs, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and chronic heart disease for the period 2001 to 2010 were: lung cancer – 1,075; chronic bronchitis – 1,055, and all forms of heart disease – 4,041. That’s about three deaths a day for lung cancer. Ditto with chronic bronchitis. For heart disease, that’s about eleven people dying everyday on the average. And yet, such senseless deaths are preventable by the simple expedient of abstention from smoking.
Try and tell that to smokers–like President P-Noy, for example. Such statistics invariably fall on deaf ears. Someday, researchers may yet come up with a study showing that inveterate smoking also causes deafness. Who knows?
It’s not only smokers who run the risk of contracting debilitating diseases, even non-smokers who are exposed to second hand smoke, especially children, can, and do, contract diseases which smokers are heir to. According to WHO, in addition to the five to six million people who will die this year from tobacco-related diseases, 600,000 non-smokers will suffer the same fate “because governments are not doing enough to quit or protect others from second-hand smoke.”
To mark World No Tobacco Day last May 31, the World Lung Foundation (WLF) launched a website of graphic and gruesome images of the health effects of smoking g that health officials can download for use as warnings on tobacco packaging. Unless the campaign against smoking succeeds in making millions of smokers around the world abandon the vice, WHO says that by the year 2030—less than two decades from today—the annual death toll could reach EIGHT MILLION. Many of them Filipinos, Dabawenyos included (hopefully, NOT YOU).
