The children of the world jointly lose 8.45 million years of healthy life due to the smoke of the tobacco they breathe, especially those living in medium and low income regions, according to a study presented this Monday at the European Breathing Congress of Amsterdam (Netherlands).
During the presentation, the main author, Siyu Dai, a professor at the School of Clinical Medicine of the University of Hangzhou (China) and a member of Honor of Research in the Pediatrics Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, recalled that the smoke of tobacco causes diseases and preventable deaths in children and that “there is no safe exposure level”.
Children are “especially vulnerable to tobacco smoke that causes chest infections, cardiovascular diseases, neurodevelopmental and asthma problems” because “their bodies are still developing” and because “they have little control over their own environments.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), second -hand smoke exposure causes 1.2 million premature deaths per year, 65,000 of them are children under 15 years.
“But we know that many more children will suffer diseases caused by the tobacco of other people around them, so we wanted to quantify this problem globally and regionally, to provide evidence for more precise tobacco control policies,” DAI warned.
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Global study
To do the study -the first global that examines the impact of second -hand smoke (SHS) in children under 14 years of age -, the authors analyzed data from the study of the global disease load, a large international project that tracks deaths caused by diseases, injuries and risk factors throughout the world.
One of its key measures is the year of life adjusted for disability (Daly), which represents the total load of the disease. In simple terms, a Daly is equivalent to a year of lost healthy life (either for dying too young or living with disease or disability).
When examining the data from more than 200 countries and territories, DAI estimated the years lost by the second-hand smoke in the main categories of diseases from 1990 to 2021 in children under 14 years and compared it to the socio-demographic index, which combines information about the economy, education and the fertility rate of countries around the world, as a representation of social and economic development.
He discovered that in 2021, second -hand smoke exposure was linked to almost 8.45 million years of healthy life lost due to respiratory infections and tuberculosis, especially in less developed areas.
Specifically, smoke exposure contributed to 3.79 million Dalys for low respiratory infections (acute bronchitis, pneumonia), 0.8 million for ear infections and 3.86 million due to chest infections and tuberculosis worldwide among children.
Poorer regions
The researchers confirmed that tobacco smoke is still a serious risk to the health of children worldwide, but is especially problematic in the poorest regions, where disease load rates (measured in Dalys) were much higher.
“The impact of second -hand smoke on the respiratory health of children remains serious, but in some parts of the world, children suffer even more than others. Those who live in regions with a lower socioeconomic development index support a disproportionate part of this preventable health burden,” says Dai.
For DAI, these data show that in these countries there is less public awareness about the dangers of second -hand smoke, more overpopulated and poorly ventilated households, and weaker tobacco control policies, conditions “that lead to greater exposure for children,” he says.
“Children are losing 8.4 million years of healthy life, but this could be prevented if they were protected from other people’s smoke,” says Dai.
DAI plans to perform additional analysis of the respiratory disease load related to SHS according to age, gender and other factors, to support more precise and directed interventions in the near future.
In view of this data, Filippos Filippidis, president of the Tobacco Control Committee of the European Breathing Society, based in the Imperial College in London (United Kingdom) has recommended “promoting laws that limit tobacco consumption in places where children live or go to school and reduce tobacco consumption in all age groups”.
With EFE information
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