May 31th 2024
World No Tobacco Day
GAZETTE
EACH YEAR, TOBACCO CAUSES 45.000 DEATHS AND MAKES 226.000 PEOPLE ILL IN ARGENTINA
The consumption of cigarettes and other tobacco products in Argentina causes, each year, about 45.000 deaths and more than 226.000 new cases of illness, which implies losses of more than 5.300 million in the health system and in the economy that are equivalent to 1,3% of GDP, as emerged from a modeling analysis led by researchers from the Institute of Clinical and Health Effectiveness (IECS), an academic institution affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the UBA.
“Despite decades of effort in tobacco control, smoking remains one of the main burdens on health and the economy", the authors concluded in Tobacco Control, a scientific journal from the BMJ group that published the article with these conclusions this month (see here).
The results, which are disseminated in coincidence with the World No Tobacco Day promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO), reveal the magnitude of the damage accumulated by each cigarette lit and confirm that only a minimal proportion of the direct and indirect expenses are compensated by the taxes charged to tobacco companies.
“For decades, it has been well known that smoking is harmful to health. But our study also makes clear the enormous economic dimension that involves the consumption of tobacco products and should serve as a stimulus to promote and strengthen the effective application of the different control measures," said the main author, the Dr. Andrés Pichon-Riviere, general director of the IECS, master's degree in Clinical Epidemiology from Harvard University, doctor in Public Health and principal investigator of CONICET.
To reach their conclusion, the researchers fed a probabilistic model with economic and epidemiological data from Argentina and 7 other countries in the region obtained from multiple sources, from a review of the literature to vital statistics, official records and hospital databases.
The findings were shocking. In 2020, smoking originated in Argentina:
- 758 DEATHS, of which 32,1% are due to lung cancer and other tumors, 27,3% to cardiovascular diseases (including cerebrovascular accidents or stroke) and 20,4% to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
- 490 DISEASE EVENTS, of which 44,9% are COPD cases, 27,2% of heart diseases, 14,4% of pneumonia and 5,0% of stroke.
- 424.591 YEARS OF HEALTHY LIFE LOST due to smoking, which is due to both premature deaths and disability from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), heart attacks, stroke, cancer and other diseases. In other words, each year there are almost 1,5 million individuals who did not “live” or were not healthy because they smoked or were exposed to secondhand smoke.
- 321 MILLION DOLLARS in direct medical expenses, caregivers and loss of productivity, which represents 1,3% of GDP and 7,2% of what Argentina spends on disease care.
HOW TO STOP THE HEALTH AND ECONOMIC IMPACT OF TOBACCO
The researchers projected what would be the 10 year benefit of the full application of four measures to control smoking What the World Health Organization (WHO) suggests:
- INCREASE TAXES ON CIGARETTES (it is the most cost-effective measure to control tobacco consumption)
- APPLY FLAT PACKAGING (with health warnings and without prominent brand colors or fonts)
- PROHIBIT THE ADVERTISING, PROMOTION AND SPONSORSHIP of tobacco products
- IMPLEMENT A SMOKE-FREE ENVIRONMENTS POLICY in closed spaces.
And they determined that, within a decade, the four combined strategies could avoid A maximum of 41.792 deaths and result in direct and indirect economic benefits exceeding 10 billion dollars in that period (secondary to savings in medical costs, treatment and patient care and a decrease in lost productivity). Only Increasing taxes to raise the price of tying could prevent 4% of all deaths in adults over 35 years of age.
“When it is argued that the State currently collects taxes from the sale of cigarettes, we must consider that this amount represents only 25,4% of the total direct medical costs that demands the attention of patients who become ill due to its consumption. It is a terrible business, not only from an economic point of view, but also from a health and social point of view,” reflects another co-author, Dr. Ariel Bardach, clinical doctor, master in Epidemiology, doctor of Medicine and director of the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Public Health (CIESP), a CONICET executing unit in the IECS.
In addition to Pigeon Riviere y Bardach, other members of the IECS participated in the authorship of this work: Federico Rodríguez Cairoli, Agustín Casarini, Natalia Espinola, Lucas Perelli, Javier Roberti, Federico Augustovski, Andrea Alcaraz and Alfredo Palacios, who is currently a research fellow at the Center for Health Economics at the University of York, York, United Kingdom.
MORE INFORMATION ABOUT TOMOKING IN ARGENTINA: tobacco.iecs.org.ar
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ABOUT IECS:
The IECS is an independent academic institution dedicated to research, education and technical cooperation in health. Founded in 2002, it is an institution affiliated with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) that is home to a CONICET executing unit, a WHO Collaborating center and a Cochrane Center.
The mission of the IECS is “to contribute to improving global health, generating and promoting the application of the best scientific evidence.”
See institutional video here
Visit institutional website at: www.iecs.org.ar
IECS PRESS CONTACT: Lic. Mariana Comolli, Coordinator of the Communication Unit mcomolli@iecs.org.ar