Smoking causes 10 per cent of deaths worldwide, study suggests

The Global Burden of Diseases report has identified that smoking causes one in 10 deaths worldwide.

The report, published in the medical journal The Lancet, was based on smoking habits in 195 countries and territories between 1990 and 2015. It outlined that despite decades of tobacco control policies, population growth has seen an increased number of smokers, with half of all smoking related deaths taking place just four countries - China, India, the US and Russia.

The researchers warned that mortality could rise further as tobacco companies aggressively targeted new markets, especially in the developing world. Meanwhile those countries which had succeeded in efforts to help people quit, had done so through a combination of higher taxes, warnings on packages and education programmes.

The report found that nearly one billion people smoked daily in 2015 - one in four men and one in 20 women. That was a reduction from one in three men and one in 12 women who lit up in 1990.

However, population growth has meant there an overall increase in the number of smokers, up from 870 million in 1990. Meanwhile, the number of tobacco-related deaths, more than 6.4 million in 2015, had increased by 4.7 per cent over the 25 year period.

Dr Emmanuela Gakidou, senior author of the report, said: "Despite more than half a century of unequivocal evidence of the harmful effects of tobacco on health, today, one in every four men in the world is a daily smoker. Smoking remains the second largest risk factor for early death and disability, and so to further reduce its impact we must intensify tobacco control to further reduce smoking prevalence and attributable burden."