Chandigarh: India is in the midst of a catastrophic epidemic of smoking deaths, which are expected to cause about one million deaths a year during the 2010s, including one in five of all male deaths and one in 20 of all female deaths at ages 30-69.
On an average, male bidi smokers lose about six years of life, female bidi smokers lose about eight years and male cigarette smokers lose about 10 years.
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The findings are from the first nationally representative study of smoking in India as a whole conducted by a team from India, Canada and the UK.
Nearly 900 field workers surveyed all adult deaths during 2001-2003 in a nationally representative sample of 1.1 million homes in all parts of India.
Researchers compared smoking histories of 74,000 adults, who had died with 78,000 living controls.
Author Prabhat Jha of the Centre for Global Health Research, St Michael’s Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada, said: “The extreme risks from smoking that we found surprised us, as smokers in India start at a later age than those in Europe or America and smoke less. But tobacco takes diseases that are already common in non-smokers and makes them more common.”
In India, there are about 120 million smokers. More than one-third of men and about five per cent of women aged 30-69 smoke either cigarettes or bidis.
The study found that, among men, about 61 per cent of those who smoke can expect to die at ages 30-69 compared with only 41 per cent of otherwise similar non-smokers.
Among women, 62 per cent of those who smoke can expect to die at ages 30-69 compared with only 38 per cent of non-smokers.
The study found there were no safe levels of smoking, but while the hazards of smoking even a few bidis a day were substantial, the dangers of cigarette smoking were even greater, corresponding to more than a doubling of the risk of death in middle age.
This suggests that cigarette smokers lose about 10 years of life compared to non-smokers’ risks similar to those seen in the West.
Source: TNS