Anti-tobacco aid by world's richest

NEW DELHI: India and China's cash strapped anti-tobacco campaigns and cessation programmes are all set to get a hefty push. Two of the world's richest men - Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates - on Thursday pledged $500 million to combat the global tobacco epidemic, most of which will be spent in low and middle-income countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Russia and Bangladesh.

Both Bloomberg and Gates called for raising taxes on tobacco products, making it unaffordable for the poor, banning cigarette advertisement, creating smoke-free spaces and curbing exhibition of cigarette smoking heroes in movies as they tend to become role models for teenagers.

Health Minister A Ramadoss has already called on Shah Rukh Khan to stop smoking on screen and has written to Finance Minister P Chidambaram to raise taxes and excise duty on cigarettes and other tobacco products besides announcing a ban on smoking in public places including offices from October 2.

While announcing their initiative to reduce tobacco use, Gates and Bloomberg said that unless urgent action was taken against tobacco consumption, as many as one billion people - more than two-thirds of them in the developing world - could die from tobacco-caused illnesses this century.

In addition to the grant, the Gates Foundation will also support complementary efforts to reduce high rates of tobacco use in countries such as China and India, as well as help prevent the tobacco epidemic from taking root in Africa.

The foundation also plans to accelerate implementation of the MPower package of proven tobacco control strategies and build economic evidence to support tobacco control over the next two years.

The six components of the package include monitoring tobacco use and the policies to prevent it, protecting people from tobacco smoke, offering people help to quit tobacco use, warning about the dangers of tobacco, enforcing bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and raising taxes on tobacco.

The tobacco epidemic in India is serious. An estimated 250 million people use tobacco in some form. Each year, nearly 1 million Indians die from tobacco-related diseases. India is also projected to have the fastest increase in tobacco-related deaths over the next 20 years compared to any other country. In India, almost half (47%) of adult men and one in seven adult women (14%) use tobacco.

Some facts

-One in 4 adults smokes tobacco globally
-Smoking kills half of smokers unless they quit
-Those killed by tobacco lose on an average 10-15 years of life
-Second-hand smoke causes lung disease, cancer, low birth weight and increased infant death
-More than 5 million people are killed by tobacco each year - more than AIDS, TB and malaria combined
-More than 80% of the world's tobacco-related deaths will be in low- and middle-income countries by 2030

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com