E-poster Presentation 2014 World Cancer Congress

Tobacco free Bangladesh: A dream need to become reality (#633)

Sheikh Mostofa 1
  1. National Institute of Cancer Research and Hospital, Dhaka, Bangladesh

Nearly 80% of the smokers worldwide live in low and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest. Tobacco users who die prematurely deprive their families of income, raise the cost of health care and hinder economic development.

Bangladesh is a country in south Asia, has the highest population density in the world. According to 2011 census total population of Bangladesh is142,316,000 which ranks 8th in the world. Total 41.3 million adults currently smoke tobacco or use it in a smokeless form Bangladesh. About 21.2m men, 0.7m women currently smoke tobacco. Nearly 12.5m men, 13.4m women currently use smokeless tobacco. Among the youth about 2% currently smoke cigarettes . Smoking rates are much higher among men than women; an estimated 45 percent of men and 1.5 percent of women smoke. In Bangladesh, more than 95,000 people die each year from tobacco-related diseases.

Due to the threat on public health, economy and development, a global treaty has been developed, named Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), by all countries’ active participation, support and input led by the World Health Organization. Bangladesh was a first signatory of the FCTC in 2003. Subsequently, Bangladesh introduced the ‘Smoking and Tobacco Products Uses (Control) Act 2005’ and developed Rules under this law in 2006. The new law “Smoking & tobacco products use (Control) (Amendment) Bill 2013” passed parliament on 29 April 2013. It is far stronger than the previous one.

I have done a survey on tobacco use and healthy Hazards very recently, the results not yet been published to any journal. Here I searched  for the starting age, maximum consumption in group of age, the brand/quality of cigarettes smoked, gender issue and related to suffering from diseases.