Year of the Lung 2010

Every year has various global themes and 2010 has been designated The Year of the Lung. A declaration was published back in December that highlights the main aims of the organisers.

Hundreds of millions of people struggle each year for life and breath due to lung diseases, including tuberculosis, asthma, pneumonia, influenza, lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), and more than 10 million die.

Chronic respiratory diseases cause approximately 7% of all deaths worldwide and represent 4% of the global burden of disease.

Tobacco use remains legal, although it kills more than 5 million people each year, including 1.3 million who die of lung cancer, and it affects the health of hundreds of thousands of others who are exposed to its effects secondhand.

Although it will be the 3rd leading cause of death worldwide by 2020, COPD is frequently not diagnosed.

There are more disturbing statistics in the declaration; I just highlighted a few. But the Year of the Lung organisers are well aware that lung diseases are low on the list of politically sensitive health issues and that many people in the world live in highly polluted environments. I suspect these two facts are not unrelated.

The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is being implemented with expected slowness. I have long suspected that cigarette smoke was an easier target than controlling air pollution. As nicotine addicts are slowly tempted into smokeless products it will take many decades before authorities will admit that polluted cities (as well as agricultural pollutants in the countryside) are as much, if not more, to blame for the rise in respiratory diseases. Implementing a Clean Air Act in all the world's polluted cities will do more for people than paying for medicines after the event.

However, I shan't be holding my breath.

China Expands Smoking Ban to 7 Cities

Chinese authorities plan to expand smoking bans in indoor public places across 7 major provincial capitals. But the numbers just don't look too promising.

Smoking is a huge business in China: 2 trillion cigarettes are sold in the country every year. The country accounts for more than one-quarter of the world's 1.3 billion smokers, with about 60 percent of Chinese men and 3 percent of women indulging in the habit.

Taxes from tobacco sales topped 416 billion yuan ($61 billion) last year, up 26.2 percent from 2008, according to a report issued last week by the state tobacco industry regulator. Interest on government loans to the industry added another 97 billion yuan ($14 billion). [Yahoo]

A lot of this money is raised by the provinces rather than central government, making it even harder to curb cigarette sales. Stressed out local administrators will probably need a few extra packets now.

International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease

The mission of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (The Union) is to bring innovation, expertise, solutions and support to address health challenges in low- and middle-income populations. With nearly 10,000 members and subscribers from 145 countries, The Union has its headquarters in Paris and regional and country offices serving the Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America and South-East Asia regions. Its scientific departments focus on tuberculosis, HIV, lung health and non-communication diseases, tobacco control and research.

See aggregated blog news below for the latest news from The Union and link.

Add Your Blog

To add your own blog to Quit Smoking and Nicotine Blogs just follow these steps.

1) Post a comment at the bottom of this page. Include a description or introduction to your blog, your blog URL and your syndicated feed URL (which is probably your RSS feed).

2) I will then copy your introduction and create a post on this blog with a link to your blog, and add your RSS feed to the aggregator below. I will usually post a comment on your blog to let you know everything has been done.

Easy!

OK, a few rules and simple guidelines.

a) One feed per person. If you have a blog plus a Twitter account and a host of other social networking services then it's up to you to decide which one is your most important feed. If I notice the same feed content from two sources I will remove one of them. As blogs are the main focus I will give preference to your blog feed.

b) The nature of giving up smoking is that blogging about it may be interesting for a while but that enthusiasm often wanes once the blogger has moved on to another topic. Any feed with no posts for the last 6 months will be removed. Pulling lots of feeds together takes up bandwidth and removing dormant blogs will increase the speed of this aggregator.

c) Similarly, if the blog is your personal blog and the topics have moved on away from smoking and nicotine I reserve the right to remove such feeds.

d) I usually try to pick one interesting post each day which I publish on this blog. I usually copy about one paragraph, possibly add my own comment and give a link to the original post. I will not republish whole articles. By requesting your feed to be added to Quit Smoking and Nicotine Blogs you agree that I can republish such excerpts.

e) Anything else I've forgotten about will be added here!

Many Thanks!

Quit Smoking and Nicotine Blogs

Hi, and welcome to Quit Smoking and Nicotine Blogs. This is a parallel service to my own Quit Smoking and Nicotine blog. I started this for my own benefit and hope it will be useful to others. It is essentially an aggregator of news and articles from blogs dealing with smoking cessation, quit smoking, stop smoking and nicotine addiction.

If you'd like to add your own blog just go to the Add Your Blog page.

Cheers!