Smoking down worldwide, but tobacco use still a major cause of death, disease: WHO

Agencies
May 31, 2018

Geneva, May 31:  Fewer people are smoking worldwide, especially women, but only one country in eight is on track to meet a target of reducing tobacco use significantly by 2025, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

Three million people die prematurely each year due to tobacco use that causes cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and stroke, the world's leading killers, it said, marking World No Tobacco Day. They include 890,000 deaths through second-hand smoke exposure.

The WHO clinched a landmark treaty in 2005, now ratified by 180 countries, that calls for a ban on tobacco advertising and sponsorship, and taxes to discourage use.

"The worldwide prevalence of tobacco smoking has decreased from 27 percent in 2000 to 20 percent in 2016, so progress has been made," Douglas Bettcher, director of the WHO's prevention of noncommunicable diseases department, told a news briefing.

Launching the WHO's global report on trends in the prevalence of tobacco smoking, he said that industrialised countries are making faster progress than developing countries.

"One of the major factors impeding low- and middle-income countries certainly is countries face resistance by a tobacco industry who wishes to replace clients who die by freely marketing their products and keeping prices affordable for young people," he added.

Progress in kicking the habit is uneven, with the Americas the only region set to meet the target of a 30 percent reduction in tobacco use by 2025 compared to 2010, for both men and women, the WHO said.

However, the United States is currently not on track, bogged down by litigation over warnings on cigarette packaging and lags in taxation, said Vinayak Prasad of the WHO's tobacco control unit.

Parts of Western Europe have reached a "standstill", particularly due to a failure to get women to stop smoking, African men are lagging, and tobacco use in the Middle East is actually set to increase, the WHO said.

Overall, tobacco kills more than 7 million a year and many people know that it increases the risk of cancer, the WHO said.

But many tobacco users in China and India are unaware of their increased risk of developing heart disease and stroke, making it urgent to step up awareness campaigns, it said.

"The percentage of adults who do not believe smoking causes stroke are for example in China as high as 73 percent, for heart attacks 61 percent of adults in China are not aware that smoking increases the risk," Bettcher said. "We aim to close this gap."

China and India have the highest numbers of smokers worldwide, accounting for 307 million and 106 million, respectively, of the world's 1.1 billion adult smokers, followed by Indonesia with 74 million, WHO figures show. India also has 200 million of the world's 367 million smokeless tobacco users.

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News Network
January 21,2020

Beijing, Jan 21: The Chinese official investigating a pneumonia outbreak stemming from a new coronavirus said the disease can spread from person to person but can be halted with increased vigilance, as authorities on Tuesday confirmed a fourth death.

Zhong Nanshan said there was no danger of a repeat of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic that killed nearly 800 people globally during a 2002-2003 outbreak, which started in China, as long as precautions were taken.

"It took only two weeks to identify the novel coronavirus," state news agency Xinhua quoted Zhong as saying late on Monday.

The outbreak was still in its early stages and China had good surveillance and quarantine systems to help control it, he added.

The outbreak has spread from the central city of Wuhan to cities including Beijing and Shanghai, with more than 200 cases reported so far. Four cases have been reported outside China - in South Korea, Thailand and Japan.

Australia on Tuesday said it would screen passengers on flights from Wuhan amid rising concerns that the virus will spread globally as Chinese travellers take flights abroad for the Lunar New Year holiday starting this week.

Authorities around the globe, including in the United States and many Asian countries, have stepped up screening of travellers from Wuhan.

Chinese authorities confirmed a total of 217 cases of the virus in China as of 6 p.m. (1000 GMT) on Monday, state television reported, 198 of which were in Wuhan.

A fourth person died on Jan. 19, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said. The 89-year-old man, who had underlying health diseases including coronary heart disease, developed symptoms on Jan. 13 and was admitted to hospital five days later, it added.

Zhong, who is renowned in China for his work fighting SARS in 2003, confirmed that the virus can pass from person-to-person.

Fifteen medical workers in Wuhan had been diagnosed with pneumonia, with one other suspected case, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said. Of the infected staff, one was in critical condition.

In Shanghai, officials on Tuesday confirmed a second case involving a 35-year-man who had visited Wuhan in early January, and said they were monitoring four other suspected cases.

The virus causes a type of pneumonia and belongs to the same family of coronaviruses as SARS. Symptoms include fever and difficulty in breathing, which are similar to many other respiratory diseases and pose complications for screening efforts.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Monday an animal source appeared most likely to be the primary origin of the outbreak and that some "limited human-to-human transmission" occurred between close contacts.

The Geneva-based U.N. agency convened an emergency committee for Wednesday to assess whether the outbreak constitutes an international health emergency and what measures should be taken to manage it.

So far, the WHO has not recommended trade or travel restrictions, but a panel of independent experts could do so or make other recommendations to limit spread.

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Agencies
January 26,2020

Jaipur, Jan 26: Rajasthan on Saturday on Saturday became the third state in the country to pass a resolution urging the Centre to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

he resolution was passed in the state Assembly amid opposition by the BJP which accused the ruling Congress of pursuing appeasement politics.

It is the second Congress-ruled state to pass such a resolution after Punjab. The Kerala Assembly too had passed such a resolution against the CAA moved jointly by the ruling Left Front alliance and the opposition Congress-led UDF.

The Rajasthan Assembly resolution, passed by voice vote, also asked the Centre to withdraw the new fields of information that have been sought for updation of the National Population Register (NPR) 2020.

"It is evident that the CAA violates the provisions of the Constitution. Therefore, the House resolves to urge upon the government of India to repeal the CAA to avoid any discrimination on the basis of religion in granting citizenship and to ensure equality before law for all religious groups of India," the state's parliamentary affairs minister Shanti Dhariwal said, moving the resolution.

Leader of the opposition Gulab Chand Kataria of the BJP questioned the state's right to challenge the Act.

"Granting citizenship is a matter for the Centre. In such a situation do we have the right to challenge the CAA? The Congress should stop doing appeasement and vote bank politics," he said.

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abdullah
 - 
Sunday, 26 Jan 2020

Salute to Rajasthan Govt for rejecting communal and black CAA bill.   This bill is agaisnt the teach of our Constitution and bjp has never done anything as per our constitutin.   Its trying its best to scrap the constitution and restore it with RSS agenda.    We should oppose any move by bjp against the value of constitution.   As bjp has no respect to our constitution, it has no right to be in power.    Many of bjp leaders are giving statemetns against the value of constitution and such leaders should be treated as anti indians and action be taken on them.   

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News Network
January 6,2020

Aboard Air Force One, Jan 6: US President Donald Trump threatened sanctions against Baghdad on Sunday after Iraq's parliament called on US troops to leave the country, and the president said if troops did leave, Baghdad would have to pay Washington for the cost of the air base there.

"We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that's there. It cost billions of dollars to build, long before my time. We're not leaving unless they pay us back for it," Trump told reporters on Air Force One.

Trump said that if Iraq asked US forces to leave and it was not done on a friendly basis, "we will charge them sanctions like they've never seen before ever. It'll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame."

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