BHUBANESWAR: Even as the World No Tobacco Day was observed all across on Thursday, there are efforts to achieve the goal of making Cuttack and Khurda districts smoke-free.

An average 274 people die each day in the country from tobacco-related diseases, according to a survey carried out by a consumer protection agency.

GUWAHATI: the World Health Organization (WHO) will observe the 12th World No Tobacco Day. This year WHO has selected ‘Tobacco Industry Interference’ as the theme.

Article 5.3 of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) requires all parties when setting and implementing their public health policies with respect to tobacco control “to protect these policies from commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry in accordance with national law”.

Contrary to the prevalent belief, smoking is the most important cause of premature heart attacks, with India having about 4.5 crore patients with ischemic heart disease, doctors warned on Wednesday on the eve of the “World No Tobacco Day.”

According to the World Health Organisation, tobacco use is one of the biggest public health threats worldwide which kills nearly six million people a year of whom about 600,000 are non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke.

CHENNAI : It might just be that much more difficult to get your daily dose of cigarettes on May 31. To mark World Tobacco-free Day, the Tamil Nadu Vanigar Sangankalin Peravai has made an appeal to their 2 lakh odd members in Chennai who are involved in the sale of tobacco products, to abstain from doing so on that day.

This is part of several other anti-tobacco initiatives that the traders body has organised in association with the Cancer Institute (WIA).

Tobacco use is one of the leading preventable causes of death. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the global tobacco epidemic kills nearly 6 million people each year, of which more than 600,000 are people who have been exposed to second-hand smoke (passive smoking).

Experts say the focus of the campaign is on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry's brazen and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) because of the serious danger it poses to public health.

Nearly 6 million Mumbaikars consume tobacco in some or the other form, according to statistics collected by Tata Memorial Hospital as part of its ongoing studies on tobacco use.

Tobacco-related diseases killed as many as 100,000 people every year and nearly 1,200 children start smoking every day in Pakistan because of government inaction, health experts agreed on Tuesday.

China currently has 260 million patients with chronic diseases, and these illnesses have resulted in some 85 percent of the country's total deaths, figures from the Ministry of Health show.