Chinese Health Ministry: Passive Smoking Kills 100,000 Chinese Annually

May 29, 05:32 PM

Current Headlines: Text of report in English by official Chinese news agency Xinhua (New China News Agency)

["Passive Smoking Kills 100,000 Chinese Annually: Report" - Xinhua headline]

Beijing, May 29 (Xinhua) - About 540 million Chinese are suffering the effects of passive smoking and more than 100,000 of them die annually from diseases caused by passive smoking, according to the Ministry of Health.

The ministry's 2007 Report on China's Smoking Control, said to be the first of its kind in China, quotes a survey in which 35 per cent of respondents were aware of the dangers of passive smoking.

Most misunderstood the issue and some thought that indoor smoking had little impact on their health when the room was ventilated.

China is the world's largest tobacco producing and consuming country, accounting for more than a third of the global total on both counts.

The report estimated that China has more than 350 million smokers and nearly one million die from smoking-related diseases each year.

"We hope the report can promote authorities to institute and implement laws or regulations to prevent passive smoking inside public buildings," said Yang Gonghuan, deputy director of the National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

The government has banned smoking on public transport, but it is still allowed in many public places, including restaurants.

The health ministry also called on the cities hosting Olympic games to issue a tobacco-free games plan to achieve a "green Olympics".

The central budget allocated special funds to local governments to support programmes on smoking control in 2006 and 2007, according to the health ministry though it did not disclose the sum.

(c) 2007 BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.