The Cost Of Smoking In The UK

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Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 09 Jun 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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A study available ahead of print in Tobacco Control reports that the cost of tobacco illnesses to the National Health Services in The United Kingdom is five times the accepted figure, resulting in more than 5 billion pounds a year.

The most up to date data is based on information dating back to 1991. It demonstrates that the direct cost estimates to the healthcare system ranged from 1.4 to 1.7 billion pounds a year, and an astonishing death toll in excess of 105,000 people up to 2002.

The authors mention that the studies concerning tobacco illness are not carried out on a regular basis and most of them, if not all, are somewhat incomplete prompting confidence on information that is rapidly outdated. This is mainly due to the reason that it is extremely difficult to calculate the direct expenditures of this disease.

For the purpose of this study, the authors revised and gathered information from the following sources.
• An analysis on the currently accepted figures on three sources of data up to 2005/06 when at the time, one in four UK adults were smokers.
• A detailed revision on published research dating between 1997 and 2007.
• The gathering of information from a 2002 study by the WHO's Global Burden of Disease Project evaluating the disease proportions credited to a particular risk factor by gender and region.
• The routine data of the monthly death toll for the year 2005 related to smoking in The United Kingdom.

Based on the conclusions on the figures gathered above, the authors determined that in 2005, approximately 110,000 people died as a direct result of smoking. Therefore concluding that one in every five of all deaths (19 percent) was smoking related. And out of this smoking related percentage, one in four deaths was among men (27 percent), compared to only one in ten among women.

These figures are similar to previous estimates, say the authors, and "suggests that the overall numbers of deaths attributable to smoking have not changed much in the past 10 years."

Another important conclusion the authors outlined is that according to the composite measure of Disability Adjusted Life Years Lost (DALY), smoking has always been directly accountable for a significantly large amount of disability and premature deaths.

Of all DALYs lost in the UK, twelve were directly attributed to smoking.

Finally the authors concluded that since 1990 an unchanged 5.5 percent of the total NHS budget accounting for 5.2 billion pounds is considered an adequate estimate for the direct impact of smoking for the year 2005/06. This percentage proportion hat has not changed since the early 1990's. They also consider this annual expenditure perhaps as an underestimate, since many issues still have not been taken into consideration, such as few indirect costs like lost productivity and informal care, the cost of passive smoking, or the full range of conditions linked to smoking.

"The burden of smoking-related ill health in the United Kingdom"
S Allender, R Balakrishnan, P Scarborough, P Webster, M Rayner
doi:10.1136/tc.2008.026294
Tobacco Control

Written by Stephanie Brunner (B.A.)
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

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