President's Message "Causing and Controlling Cancer" (Vol 3, No 3, Winter 02-03) -

In a separate panel it was stated that there are two million deaths per year from smoking in developed countries and one million in lesser developed countries. This was true some years ago, but remains on the WHO website. More recently, it has been estimated that in 2000, approximately 2.1 million deaths occurred in industrialized countries, and 2.1 million in developing countries (total, 4.2 million). Since then the number of annual deaths has increased, and it is now estimated to be 4.9 million. An excellent source for information about tobacco-related health problems is the WHO Tobacco Atlas, available at http://www.who.int/tobacco/ statistics/tobacco_atlas/en/. See also, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the world’s first public health treaty, which was unanimously adopted at the 56th World Health Assembly on 21 May, 2003, by WHO’s 192 Member States - www.who.int/tobacco/fctc/text/final/en/. The WHO predictions also shown in this panel – 10 million total deaths, 7 million in developing countries, by 2025, remain current.