Rawalpindi : Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) kill more people than any other cause of death worldwide and tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure are important risk factors for the development of coronary heart disease, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease.
Tobacco use that is second leading cause of CVD contributes to approximately 12 per cent of all heart disease deaths. In Pakistan, 30 to 40 per cent of all deaths are due to CVD that have reached about 200,000 per year means 410/100000 of the population. At least 12 Pakistanis die every hour due to heart attack and the main reason behind it is excessive smoking among country’s youth and that is why people are developing heart disease in their early 40s.
Head of Community Medicine at CMH Lahore Medical College Professor Dr. Muhammad Ashraf Chaudhry expressed this while talking to ‘The News’ in connection with World No Tobacco Day being observed on Thursday around the globe.
He added that tobacco kills more than 150,000 people every year in Pakistan, more than suicide bombing, road traffic accidents, honour killings and drug abuse combined.
Every year, on May 31, WHO and partners mark Word No Tobacco Day highlighting the health risks associated with tobacco use and advocating effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption. For World No Tobacco Day 2018, the theme is “Tobacco and heart disease” and slogan is “Tobacco breaks hearts; choose health, not tobacco”.
The aim of the campaign is to increase awareness on the link between tobacco and heart and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including stroke, which combined are the world’s leading causes of death. It will also focus on feasible actions and measures that key audiences, including governments and the public, can take to reduce the risks to heart health posed by tobacco.
Dr. Ashraf said tobacco in every form including cigarettes, ‘sheesha’, cigars, pipes, or chewable tobacco such as snuff (niswar), ‘beedis’, pan tobacco, ‘gutka’, ‘pan masala’, ‘chalia’ etc. is very harmful to health and exposure to second hand smoke is also dangerous.
He said studies have shown that 30% of heart disease patients who are admitted in Intensive Coronary Care Units are smokers. Smokers are two-fold at increased risk of having heart disease in comparison with non-smokers. Cigarette smoking is a powerful independent risk factor for sudden cardiac death in patients with coronary heart disease, he said.
He added that despite the devastating harms of tobacco to heart health, and the availability of solutions to reduce tobacco-related death and disease, knowledge among large sections of the public that tobacco is one of the leading causes of CVD is low.
Tobacco users who die prematurely deprive their families of income, raise the cost of health care and hinder economic development, said Dr. Ashraf. He said there are more than 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, of which 250 are known to be harmful and more than 50 are known to cause cancer.