Around 40,000 people in Vietnam die because of smoking annually, equivalent to
the death cases caused by HIV/AIDS until March 2008, an expert said at a
seminar in late April in Hanoi.

“The dead victims of traffic accidents in Vietnam in 2007 were 13,200. This
number is scary, but it is less than one third of deaths caused by cigarettes
in a year,” said Pham Hoang Anh, director of the HealthBridge Canada in Vietnam.

She said that the death cases by cigarettes may reach 70,000
a year if effective measures to control tobacco are not implemented.

Recent research shows that cigarette smoke contains up to
7,000 toxic substances, not 4,000, including at least 70 carcinogens. Not only
smokers but people around them are at high risks of getting cancer.

According to research work conducted at the National Cancer
and Turmor Hospital
(K Hospital) in Hanoi,
the risk of getting cancer for 6-month smokers is 6.5 times more than
non-smoking people. Kids in families with smokers face risks to catch
pneumonia, bronchitis, asthma and sudden death of eight times more than other
children.

One effective measure to reduce the numbers of smokers; is
printing pictures featuring the harmfulness of tobacco on cigarette packs, but
in Vietnam,
the warnings are only in words so they are almost ineffective.

A survey reveals that nearly 40 percent of smokers in Vietnam
can remember the warning “smoking may cause lung cancer” printed on packs of
cigarette.

“The Ministry of Health worked out a roadmap to print
picture-warnings on packa of cigarettea in 2007, but this measure has not been
implemented,” Hoang Anh said.

Though Vietnam
bans people from smoking at public sites, until now, no one has been fined for
smoking at public sites, Hoang Anh added.

PV