| Summary: | Background
World
Health Organisation´s South-East Asia Region is home to about one fourth of the
world's population. Of this, there are about 246 million smokers and 290
million smokeless tobacco users. In addition to the human toll, the effects of
tobacco are felt significantly in the economy of a country. The World Bank has
declared that, when effects of poverty due to loss of income, spending on tobacco
and costs of illness are taken into account, tobacco use is a net loss to an
economy.
Methods
Objective
of the study: To determine the correlation of tobacco use with tobacco related disease burden and developmental indicators of
South East Asian countries. Study
method: Secondary data-based Cross-Sectional Study Data
sources: Data on tobacco prevalence, cancer prevalence, human development
index, tobacco economics and poverty indicators during the year 2014-2015 were
collected from various sources such as WHO Report on Global Tobacco Epidemic 2015,
World Bank data, Tobacco Atlas and World Life Expectancy 2014 reports. Data
analysis: Data were analyzed using Pearsonn´s Correlation Coefficient on SPSS
version 16. Results were considered significant at 95% level of significance.
Results
The Study
represented data of 11 Countries of the WHO South East Asia Region. Current
smoking prevalence ranged between 2.80% and 39.80% with a mean prevalence of
20.7% (± 9.24). Both prevalence of smoking and number of cigarettes smoked per
year per ca-pita in the 11 countries had a positive moderate correlation with
the number of deaths per 100000 population due to lung cancer (r= 0.62 &
0.76; P=0.04 & 0.01). Oral Cancer increased with prevalence of smokeless
tobacco use (r=0.07; P=0.07). [Correlates between tobacco use and tobacco burden]
Conclusions
The
study findings suggest that tobacco prevalence, tobacco related deaths and
tobacco economics can be correlated with the health profile of
countries in the region. These
countries show positive correlation between tobacco use and related diseases.
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