Pretoria - With tobacco-related diseases, disabilities and deaths costing the South African public health system up to R14.48 billion, citizens have been urged to quit smoking.
Professor Michael Herbst, a Health consultant of the Cancer Association of South Africa (Cansa), said non-communicable diseases such as cancers, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and chronic lung diseases were in most cases aggravated and brought on by smoking.
Herbst said with more and more people smoking, illnesses normally prevalent in elderly persons were now affecting younger age groups between the ages of 30 and 40 years.
One such illness mentioned was rheumatoid arthritis which he said mostly occurred in men who were heavy smokers. Women who smoked were reportedly 1.3 times more at risk of developing the disease.
In fact, Herbst said the reason why stricter measures ought to be looked into in relation to tobacco control, was due to the fact smoking was known to compromise the equilibrium or balance of the immune system.
For one, he said, smoking increased the risk of contracting several immune and autoimmune disorders.
Autoimmune disorders refer to a condition caused when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's healthy cells and tissues.
Smoking also reportedly increased the risk of age-related macular degeneration, cataracts, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and dry eye syndrome. Smokers are three to four times more likely to develop these diseases than non-smokers. In addition to that, with South Africa having the eighth highest tuberculosis incidence globally, at a rate of 537 per 100 000 of the population per year, Herbst said smoking was known to increase the risk of contracting the disease.
He said it was important to note that oftentimes, despite the evidence showing the harmful links between tobacco and TB, many patients still continued to smoke.
"Modifiable behaviours such as tobacco use, physical inactivity, unhealthy diet and the harmful use of alcohol, all increase the risk of non-communicable diseases. And as it stands, tobacco accounts for over 8 million deaths every year, including from the effects of exposure to second-hand smoke."
The researchers added that the more cigarettes one smoked, the more it increased a person's risk for type-2 diabetes, with smoking making the disease harder to manage. Herbst pointed out that people who smoked and had diabetes were more likely to have trouble with insulin dosing and with managing their condition.
He added that according to the research, non-communicable diseases killed 41 million people each year globally, with 17 million people dying before the age of 70, particularly in low and middle-income countries.
Peter Ucko, of the Tobacco, Alcohol and Gambling advisory, advocacy and action group said according to the Constitution of South Africa, there was no right to smoke. However, people had to ensure that they did not infringe on others' rights to a healthy environment.
Ucko said it was not true that banning tobacco production would lead to massive job losses as there were numerous alternative sustainable food crops that could be produced in lieu of tobacco. These include ground nuts, onions, maize, beet, sweet potatoes and apples, to name a few.
Hemp, bamboo and elephant grass were reportedly some of the alternative food crops that could be used to replace tobacco farming.
Ucko said if anything, the lack of tobacco products would benefit many households in the country as breadwinners would not die prematurely from smoking. Households would also be able to use the money spent on tobacco products for other purposes which would greatly benefit the economy.
Health experts and researchers weighed in on the effects of smoking during a four-part webinar series on the Risks Associated with Tobacco Use organised by the Department of Health yesterday.
Pretoria News