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Passive smoking kills 600,000 a year: WHO

Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers said on Friday.

In the first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it.

"Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and south Asia," the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study.

Children's exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco "seems to be a deadly combination for children in these regions", they said.

Commenting on the findings in the Lancet journal, Heather Wipfli and Jonathan Samet from the University of Southern California said policymakers try to motivate families to stop smoking in the home.

"In some countries, smokefree homes are becoming the norm, but far from universally," they wrote.

The WHO researchers looked at data from 192 countries for their study. To get comprehensive data from all 192, they had to go back to 2004. They used mathematical modelling to estimate deaths and the number of years lost of life in good health.

Worldwide, 40 per cent of children, 33 per cent of non-smoking men and 35 per cent non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, they found.

This exposure was estimated to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer.

For the full impact of smoking, these deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use, the researchers said.

CHILDREN

While deaths due to passive smoking in children were skewed towards poor and middle-income countries, deaths in adults were spread across countries at all income levels.

In Europe's high-income countries, only 71 child deaths occurred, while 35,388 deaths were in adults. Yet in the countries assessed in Africa, an estimated 43,375 deaths due to passive smoking were in children compared with 9,514 in adults.

Pruss-Ustun urged countries to enforce the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which includes higher tobacco taxes, plain packaging and advertising bans, among other steps.

"Policy-makers should bear in mind that enforcing complete smoke-free laws will probably substantially reduce the number of deaths attributable to exposure to second-hand smoke within the first year of its implementation, with accompanying reduction in costs of illness in social and health systems," she wrote.

Only 7.4 per cent of the world population currently lives in jurisdictions with comprehensive smoke-free laws, and those laws are not always robustly enforced.

In places where smoke-free rules are adhered to, research shows that exposure to second hand smoke in high-risk places like bars and restaurants can be cut by 90 per cent, and in general by 60 per cent, the researchers said.

Studies also show such laws help to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked by smokers and lead to higher success rates in those trying to quit.

Smile Week surgeons put words in child's mouth

(FILE)

The shy, five-year-old Gugulethu Tshabalala from Katlehong could not talk properly because of the wide gap in her mouth caused by a cleft palate. But now she can.

Surgeons linked to the Smile Foundation corrected her birth deformity. The little girl  spent three hours under an anaesthetic at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital.

Gugulethu was born three months prematurely and her birth weight was less than 1kg. She is also blind in one eye and deaf in one ear and has a malformed nose and lip.

Even though life has not been kind on her so far, she she is a happy and shy child who loves playing with puzzles.

Even though Gugulethu will need follow-up dental surgery to correct her teeth and nose, her life will change for the better. Her anxious mother can already make a difference in her voice quality and speech.

Gugulethu will begin speech therapy once she recovers from the operation.

And the winner of Miss Plastic 2010 is...

Image for illustrative purpose only. (FILE)

Breast implants, nose jobs and face lifts are requirement for Miss Plastic 2010, reports UK-based daily Metro.

The pageant in Budapest, Hungary is only for those girls who have surgically enhanced their 'charms'.

Judges will then rate them on their beauty - and a special medical panel will add extra marks once they have rated the quality of the plastic surgery, says the newspaper.

The winner will go on to a 'face-off' with international contestants in Miss Plastic Universe.

Adult club owners forced to recruit students

Image for illustrative purpose only. (FILE) 

Canada has reduced the number of visas given out to foreign dancers and adult club owners are under pressure to recruit students to strip from colleges and universities, according to media reports.

A plan to recruit students is being examined by an association committee. Once the plan is approved, scouts would reach out to school and college students by spring.

About 20 per cent of Toronto's 5,000 dancers are students. Some clubs are even ready to offer students 'tuition fees' in addition to wages. A club owner said on condition of anonymity,  students can dance on weekends and earn enough money for their studies.

Oops! Old man bricks himself into his own cellar

Image for illustrative purpose only. (FILE)

A senior citizen bricked himself into his own cellar as he attempted to seal off the entrance to it in what police have deemed a 'pretty stupid' mistake, reports UK daily Metro.

'He was on the wrong side of the wall when his work was finished,' the police was quoted by the newspaper.

The old man apparently wanted to seal off the cellar's entrance to trim the cost of his heating bills.

He freed himself from self-involed captivity by knocking down a wall after camping in the cellar for several days. However, and here's the catch, he opted to demolish his neighbours' wall rather than the one he had just put up.

The old man's neighbours alerted the police upon discovering their demolished wall.

Status of dogs 'elevated' in India

Image for illustrative purpose only. (FILE)

The status of dogs in housing societies have been elevated, claims The Times of India. Man's best friend can now use lifts for free and owners cannot be charged. A new judgment has set a precedent for housing societies on how to treat pets.

A consumer redressal forum in Mumbai has rapped a society for charging one of its member Rs 500 (Dh50 approximately) for each of his two dogs using the elevator.

The forum has ruled that pets are members of the modern, urban family and there is no reason why pets can't use elevators when outsiders, including service providers such as milkmen and vendors, have access to the facility without any charges, the daily reported.

The family in question - the D'Souzas - were shocked by the resolution passed during the society's general body on August 10, 2008, charging Rs 500 per month for each pet using the lifts.

The move hit the couple hard as they would use the elevator to take their pet dogs Barney, a labrador, and Dash, a mongrel, for a daily walk.

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