Over 7.4 million premature deaths could be prevented as a result of new tobacco control measures implemented in 41 different countries between 2007 and 2010.

The finding was published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization.

The study evaluated the impact of the tobacco control measures established at the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in 2005.

The study reported on the overall success that the new measures have had in reducing the prevalence of tobacco use.

Lead author, David Levy, PhD, professor of oncology at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, Washington, said that the finding is “spectacular ” and that by establishing simple tobacco control policies countries have been able to “save so many lives”.

WHO identified six tobacco control measures in 2008 that were considered to be the most effective in preventing tobacco use, the organization provided a great deal of support to help countries successfully carry out the measures.

The measures are known as “MPOWER”, and include:

  • Monitoring the use of tobacco and prevention policies
  • Protecting people from tobacco smoke
  • Offering help to quit tobacco use
  • Warning people about the dangers associated with tobacco use
  • Enforcing bans on tobacco advertising
  • Promotion and sponsorship
  • Raising taxes on tobacco

The researchers developed a model that predicted the number of deaths that these measures could prevent by 2050. They focused on 41 different countries that reached “the highest level of achievement,”

One-seventh of the world’s population – approximately one billion people, including over 290 smokers – live in these 41 high-achieving nations.

Thirty-three of the countries had applied at least one MPOWER measure, while the other 8 had applied two or more.

Levy said that “in addition to some 7.4 million lives saved, the tobacco control policies we examined can lead to other health benefits such as fewer adverse birth outcomes related to maternal smoking, including low birth weight, and reduced health-care costs and less loss of productivity due to less smoking-related disease.”

Douglas Bettcher, MD, director of the department of non-communicable diseases at WHO, believes that these measures should be implemented more widely, preventing millions of deaths from smoking.

Bettcher said that “tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of death in the world, with six million smoking-attributable deaths per year today, and these deaths are projected to rise to eight million a year by 2030, if current trends continue. By taking the right measures, this tobacco epidemic can be entirely prevented.”

As one of the most embraced treaties in the United Nations history, WHO FCTC was implemented in 2005 – 175 countries joined up.

University of Michigan researchers similarly published a study stating that millions of smoking-related deaths could be prevented by 2030 if the World Health Organization smoking reduction policy were applied immediately worldwide.

Kenneth Warner, professor of public health said that “(where adopted) the tobacco control policies embedded in MPOWER have had a substantial impact on smoking, creating one of the greatest public health success stories of recent decades. The tragedy is that the failure to adopt these policies will lead to literally millions of avoidable premature deaths.”

A study conducted at the University of Liverpool and published in The Lancet revealed that a decrease in smoking significantly reduces mortality rates in entire populations within just six months.

Written by Joseph Nordqvist