tailieunhanh - Impact of Tobacco Use on Women’s Health

Aboriginal Women’s Health Research shall maintain open public access to final reports of research activities. Reports may be circulated in draft form, Aboriginal community response at this stage is deemed useful for purposes of revision. Results of community research shall be distributed as widely as possible within participating communities, and reasonable efforts shall be made to present results in non technical language and Aboriginal languages where appropriate. | Gender Women and the Tobacco Epidemic 4. Impact of Tobacco Use on Women s Health Introduction Cigarette smoking was initially adopted by men in industrialized countries and was later taken up by women in those countries and men in developing countries. With the recent decline in smoking in industrialized countries the multinational tobacco companies have moved aggressively into the developing nations. Consequently there is a risk of an epidemic of tobacco-related diseases in the developing world where tobacco use is increasingly becoming a major health issue for women as well as The high percentage of non-smoking women in those countries makes them an attractive target for the industry. The health effects of smoking in a population become fully pronounced only about a half-century after the habit is adopted by a sizeable percentage of young adults. Thus most of what is known about the health effects of tobacco use among women comes from studies in industrialized countries where women began smoking cigarettes decades ago and there has been adequate time to monitor the consequences. Despite the relative paucity of epidemiological data on women in developing countries there is no reason to think that female smokers there will be spared the serious health effects of smoking. In those countries where female smoking is increasing it may be several decades before the full health impact is felt but devastating health consequences are inevitable unless action is taken today. Data from industrialized countries show that mortality of women who smoke is elevated by 90 or more compared with mortality among those who do not smoke 2-4 with evidence that risk increases as the number of cigarettes smoked and the duration of smoking increase. Thus the risk of premature death for tens of millions of women worldwide is nearly doubled by a single factor tobacco use that is entirely preventable. It is well established that lung cancer is generally rare in populations where smoking