Tobacco

Smoking remains a major contributory factor to the gap in mortality and healthy life expectancy between the most and least advantaged. Currently, 5.4 million people die each year from the global tobacco epidemic. The death toll is rising relentlessly and in two decades will reach over 8 million a year. Unless serious action is taken, it is estimated that up to 1 billion people could die from tobacco use during the 21st century.

According to the WHO/Europe tobacco control database, smoking accounts for 12–20 years of life lost and up to 21% of deaths. In the WHO European Region smoking prevalence is estimated at around 28.6% with a large gender difference: 40% of males and 18.2% of females. On average, statistics show that 24% of young people aged 15 years smoke every week.

Surveillance

An effective and sustainable system is essential to monitor the tobacco epidemic and evaluate the impact of tobacco control interventions. The timely dissemination of information, so that action can be taken, is equally important.

Surveillance largely takes place through the Global Tobacco Surveillance System (GTSS), MPOWER and national WHO tobacco control counterparts. It covers many areas, such as the prevalence, health and economic consequences, and sociocultural determinants of tobacco use; tobacco control policy responses and tobacco industry activities.

Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)

Article 20 of the WHO FCTC addresses surveillance:
“The Parties shall establish, as appropriate, programmes for national, regional and global surveillance of the magnitude, patterns, determinants and consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. Towards this end, the Parties should integrate tobacco surveillance programmes into national, regional and global health surveillance programmes so that data are comparable and can be analysed at the regional and international levels, as appropriate.”

Article 21 on reporting and exchange of information, requires that Parties submit: “... periodic reports on its implementation of this Convention, which should include...information on surveillance and research as specified in Article 20”.