WHO says tobacco deaths understated.

HELSINKI -- Projections of worldwide future tobacco-related deaths may be underestimated says a newly released report from the World Health Organization on use of tobacco and other non-tobacco products, such as bidis and water pipes, among 13 to 15 year old girls and boys.

The report, The Global Youth Tobacco Survey, which is the largest survey on adolescents and tobacco, studied tobacco use in more than one million adolescents from more than 100 countries. The study was a collaborative effort of the u.s. Centres for Disease Control, the WHO and its regional offices, the Canadian Public Health Association and other international agencies along with individual countries.

Unlike tobacco use among adults, where women are only about one-fourth as likely to smoke cigarettes as men, the survey found that there was no gender difference between the 13 to 15 year-old boys and girls in cigarette smoking in over half the survey sites.

As well, in more than 70 per cent of the sites surveyed there was no gender difference between the boys and girls in their use of other tobacco products.

"These findings could appreciably raise the projection of tobacco-related deaths per year," said Dr. Vera da Costa e Silva, the WHO'S project manager for their Tobacco Free Initiative. "National governments can help address this now through gender sensitive education and awareness programmes."

As well, Charles Warren, CDC'S lead scientist on the survey, who stressed that first, specific gender programmes must be developed that empathize the serious health consequences of tobacco use, including poor reproductive health, and "second, the widespread use of other tobacco products in addition to cigarettes in many countries means that tobacco control programs must be broad in scope."