Islamabad - Secondhand smoke kills 600,000 people a year worldwide with more than a third of them, 165,000 to be exact, children, says World Health Organization report.

Smoking costs the global economy more than $1 trillion a year, and will kill one third more people by 2030 than it does now, according to a study by the WHO and the US National Cancer Institute published this year.

“The number of tobacco-related deaths is projected to increase from about 6 million deaths annually to about 8 million annually by 2030, with more than 80 per cent of these occurring in LMICs (low- and middle-income countries),” the study said.

According to the report, a first-ever global assessment, one billion people smoke worldwide, but smoking causes more damage to non-smokers than smokers.

“Among non-smokers worldwide, 40 per cent of children, 35 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men were exposed to secondhand smoke, the most recent year for which data was available across the 192 countries examined. When added to the 5.1 million fatalities attributable to active smoking, the final death toll from tobacco for one year was more than 5.7 million people,” it said. 

The report said nearly half the passive smoking deaths occurred in women, with the rest divided almost equally between children and men, the report said, adding some 60 per cent were caused by heart disease and 30 per cent by lower respiratory infections, followed by asthma and lung cancer.

The WHO report said infectious diseases and tobacco seemed to be a deadly combination.

According to it, children’s exposure to secondhand smoke most likely happens at home.

It further said one reason twice as many non-smoking women die was simply because they outnumber their male counterparts by 60 per cent, they were also, in the developing world, 50 per cent more likely to be exposed to harmful smoke.

In every six seconds, someone in the world dies from tobacco use while approximately 100,000 people succumbed to tobacco related diseases in Pakistan alone.

A research transpires that adult tobacco users in Pakistan have surpassed 20 million in Pakistan while over 500,000 children have also become addicts to smoking.

According to official statistics, about 100,000 persons die every year owing to the tobacco specific diseases like lungs, throat cancer, respiratory and heart diseases and over 5000 people are being admitted into hospitals daily being infected with these diseases.

The cost of cigarettes is increased in all over the world to discourage cigarette smokers but in Pakistan the conspiracy is being hatched to lower their cost in upcoming budget 2017-18.

Every week 1645 people breathe their last in Pakistan owing to smoking. Male tobacco users constitute 12.2 percent and female 5.4 per cent of 100,000 deaths which are caused due to smoking.

The number of underage smoker is higher in Pakistan than the countries with average income.