Acting Minister of Health,
Dr. Hassan Muhammed Lawal has declared that about 5 million deaths occurred annually world wide due to cigarette smoking .

The minister who disclosed this last week in Abuja while briefing the press on the 2008 World No Tobacco Day warned that if adequate measures were not put in place the figure was bound to rise to about 10 million deaths by the year 2020 with 7 million of these deaths occurring in developing countries including Nigeria.

No World Tobacco day is celebrated annually on May 31st every year and it is on this special day that governments, communities and individuals are united to focus on issues related to tobacco use and how it affects the health and well being of people around the globe.

The theme for this year is “Tobacco Free For Youth,” which the minister described as timely. He decried the current trend whereby the tobacco industries use young people to propagate their business.

The minister revealed that government all over the world were bracing up to fight with tobacco multinationals through a global strategy such as the World Health Organisation (WHO) framework convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).

Dr. Lawal noted that the central role played by use of tobacco was a major risk factor for major non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension, coronary heart diseases, stroke and cancer among others.

He added that the federal ministry of health has focused largely on the area of prevention control and proper management of NCDs and their risk factors including tobacco use.

Speaking earlier, the representative of the WHO Dr. Lola Sadiq in her remarks alleged that the current trend was that the tobacco industries continued to intensify its efforts to catch new, young and potentially life-long tobacco users.

She disclosed that in WHO world-wide school-based study of 13-15 years olds, more than 55% of students reported seeing advertisement for cigarettes on billboards in the previous months, while 20% owned an item with a cigarette brand logo on it.

Dr. Lola then called for total ban on tobacco advertising, adding that promotion and sponsorship is a powerful tool that can be used to protect the world’s youth from this epidemic.