Africa has been tipped as a continent where high rise in smoking-linked Tuberculosis (TB) will occur by 2050 with huge proportion in death rate. This is the outcome of a new research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) this October.

Tobacco smoking is a prevalent risk factor for TB. Nearly a fifth of the world’s population either smoke tobacco or use other tobacco products. The authors hold that most cigarettes are smoked in countries with a high prevalence of TB. In most cases, these are places in which tobacco multinationals have expanded their markets e.g. Africa. Dr. Sanjay Basu, one of the authors and his colleagues predicted that smoking may increase the effects of TB. If current smoking trends continue as they were, there will be one million new cases of TB between now and 2050. According to him, high quality campaigns against tobacco use will save millions of lives. Click here to download

Tobacco use continues to be the leading preventable cause of death and disability among adults in the world today. By the year 2020, tobacco use is expected to cause approximately 8.4 million deaths, 70% of these in developing countries.

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Developing countries are in the first stage of the tobacco epidemic. The initiation of tobacco smoking by most adults occurs early in life as adolescents or young adults.

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