Health issues in India
The Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra claims a dubious distinction. It is the Indian district with the highest rate of oral cancer. The district is home to more than a million people and reports an estimated 550 cancer cases every year. Oral cancer accounts for 28 percent of these cases, including forty percent of cancers in […]
When it comes to smoking, the damage is not to the smoker’s health alone. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), more than a third of people worldwide are exposed to passive smoking. Exposure to this secondhand smoke is responsible for approximately 600,000 deaths every year. It is good news then that Delhi is cracking […]
The fraught relationship between policymakers and India’s vaping community will not become any less contentious for the foreseeable future. On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court stayed a Union Health Ministry directive to state governments issued last year, encouraging them to ban electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) – commonly known as e-cigarettes or ‘vapes’. The Centre […]
Efforts to control tobacco use in India have failed to compel companies to clean up their act, new research suggests. Activists are calling for efforts to be stepped up to stop tobacco companies from illegally advertising to children. This follows a study conducted last month, which found such practises to be common. The Cigarettes and […]
The price of smoking bidis doesn’t stop at the cost of the cigarette itself. Thanks to its effect on health, India loses Rs 800 billion ($11.4 billion) to the poor man’s cigarette every year. Bidis are more commonly smoked in India than conventional cigarettes and other tobacco products. Of the more than 104 million Indians […]
India has made global headlines with its anti-tobacco initiatives in recent years. Graphic health warnings on tobacco product packaging, bans on smoking in most public places, a toll-free quitline and Centre-run anti-tobacco campaigns have all contributed to a noticeable decline in the number of India’s smokers. India’s progress is all the more impressive considering the […]
More than half the world’s nations are not on track to reach the UN target to reduce premature deaths from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, chronic respiratory disease, and diabetes by 2030, according to a new analysis published in The Lancet. India is one of them. NCDs have long since reached epidemic […]
The gutkha scam has been making headlines in Tamil Nadu, where senior officials including the health minister have been implicated in a multi-crore corruption scandal involving bribes paid by chewing tobacco companies. Officials stand accused of accepting bribes paid by manufacturers of gutkha, a chewing tobacco mixture which has been banned in Tamil Nadu since […]
In a controversial move, the Union Health Ministry has moved to ban e-cigarettes and similar devices in India. The Centre claims e-cigarettes pose “a great health risk to public at large, especially to children, adolescents, pregnant women and women of reproductive age”. To this end, it has moved state governments to stop e-cigarettes from being […]
Most of the world’s head and neck cancer patients are from India, recent data suggests. Experts suggest that high rates of tobacco use, particularly among men, are behind the grim statistic that 57.5 percent of the world’s head and neck cancer patients reside in India. What’s worse, the number of cases in the country are […]
