Note: World Lung Foundation united with The Union North America. From January 2016, the combined organization is known as “Vital Strategies.”
(July 23rd, 2015, Dhaka, Bangladesh, and New York, USA) – World Lung Foundation today congratulated the Government of Bangladesh for running a powerful mass media campaign this past month to highlight the specific dangers of second-hand smoke (SHS) to children and other non-smokers and to encourage smokers to quit. It is estimated that as many as 73 million Bangladeshis between the ages of 15 and 64 years may have been exposed to the campaign, which was implemented by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) with support from World Lung Foundation.
The results of previous campaigns in Bangladesh suggest that this campaign could encourage millions of quit attempts. More than 7.38 million smokers tried to quit after seeing an earlier WLF-supported government campaign and a further 4.34 million pledged to quit in the next 12 months.
Sandra Mullin, Senior Vice President, Policy and Communications, World Lung Foundation commented, “We congratulate the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the National Tobacco Control Cell on running this hard-hitting campaign. It’s vital to increase awareness of the harms of secondhand smoke to encourage population-level behavior change that could ultimately reduce the burden of tobacco – including costly increases in the incidence of non-communicable diseases like cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease and cardiovascular diseases. The current burden of smoking- and secondhand smoke-related death and disease in Bangladesh indicates an urgent need for change.”
“Tobacco is eating your baby alive”
The campaign (which is available to view here) featured a public service announcement (PSA) called “Tobacco is eating your baby alive”, which was broadcast on national TV and radio stations and featured on posters around the country. The PSA shows the urgent need to support Bangladesh’s The Smoking and Tobacco Products Usage (Control) Bill, 2013, which expanded the definition of public places where tobacco use is not allowed, including parks and restaurants.
The PSA explains that cigarette smoke contains poisons including cyanide and carbon monoxide that trigger severe health problems in children and other non-smokers, including ear infections, asthma and respiratory symptoms, as well as serious infections like pneumonia, bronchitis and TB infection. It also notes that SHS contributes to low birth weight in babies and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)(1) and ends by encouraging smokers to quit tobacco use and protect children from the harms of SHS.
According to The Tobacco Atlas, SHS increases the risks of contracting lung cancer by 30 percent (small cell lung cancer by 300 percent) and coronary heart disease by 25 percent. Exposure to SHS killed more than 600,000 non-smokers globally in 2010 from causes of death including ischemic heart disease, lower respiratory infections, asthma, and lung cancers. The Tobacco Atlas notes that 44.4 percent of men and 1.8 percent of women in Bangladesh smoke tobacco, while the majority of SHS-related deaths occur in women (47 percent) and children (28 percent)(2). This means that women and children suffer a disproportionate burden of death and disease from exposure to SHS. Overall, tobacco is the cause of 14.6 percent of adult male deaths and 5.7 percent of adult female deaths in Bangladesh – more than the average in other low-income countries.
1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2014). The Health Consequences of Smoking—50 Years of Progress: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health.
2. Öberg, Mattias et al. (2011). Worldwide burden of disease from exposure to second-hand smoke: a retrospective analysis of data from 192 countries. The Lancet , 377(9760), 139 – 146. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61388-8