Smoking causes 11% deaths in 2015; India among top 4 countries

New Delhi, April 6 : More than one in 10 deaths globally was caused due to smoking in 2015 and over 50 per cent of them took place in just four countries, one of which was India, a new study on Thursday said.
Over 11 per cent of 6.4 million deaths worldwide was caused by smoking in 2015 and 52.2 per cent of them took place in China, India, USA, and Russia, according to the latest estimates in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study published in medical journal The Lancet.
China, India, and Indonesia, the three leading countries with male smokers, accounted for 51·4 per cent of the world’s male smokers in 2015.
India has 11·2 per cent of the world’s total smokers. Deaths attributable to smoking increased by 4.7 per cent in 2015 compared with 2005 and smoking was rated as a bigger burden on health – moving from third to second highest cause of disability, the study said.”In 2015, 11·5 per cent of global deaths (6·4 million) were attributable to smoking worldwide, of which 52·2 per cent took place in four countries – China, India, the USA, and Russia),” the study said.The estimates are based on smoking habits in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2015, and illustrate that smoking remains a leading risk factor for death and disability. The study said that with growing and ageing populations already heightening the burden of tobacco, it will be crucial to support more smokers in quitting and stopping people from starting to smoke.