According to Gallup Pakistan’s study of the Global Burden of Disease 2024 report, smoking-related deaths in Pakistan are higher than the global average and the highest in South Asia.
According to Gallup Pakistan, which is independent of Gallup, the global analytics and advisory firm with headquarters in Washington, DC, Pakistan has a smoking-related death rate of 91.1 per 100,000 people annually, which is significantly higher than the averages for South Asia (78.1) and the rest of the world (72.6). This information is based on the Global Burden of Disease 2024 report.
According to a survey released on Tuesday by Gallup Pakistan, “Pakistan saw a 35 percent relative decrease in smoking-related death rates between 1990 and 2021, which is lower than the reductions achieved by India (37 percent), South Asia (38 percent), and the global average (42 percent).”
The World Health Organization estimates that 3.7 percent of Pakistan’s GDP is needed to buy 100 packs of the country’s best-selling cigarette brand. It continued by saying that this percentage is significantly lower than Bangladesh’s 4.2 percent and India’s 9.8 percent.
Due to rising cigarette prices, Pakistan’s GDP per capita needed to buy 100 packs climbed by 38% between 2012 and 2022.
Eighty percent of smokers said they wanted to stop, according to a Gallup Pakistan opinion poll from 2022.
In November, the Provincial Alliance for Sustainable Tobacco Control requested the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department to expeditiously implement the much anticipated “KP Prohibition of Tobacco and Protection of Non-Smokers Health Bill”. Since the Law Department examined the measure in 2016, it has been pending.
A study conducted in June found that a startling 95% of children in Bangladesh and Pakistan were exposed to secondhand smoke, increasing their risk of respiratory tract infections and, in the case of infants with genetic problems, mortality.
