Today is World No Tobacco Day which is meant to draw attention to the negative effects of tobacco use on health and mortality risk. Tobacco use significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular, respiratory diseases and certain types of cancer. WHO has also stated that smoking is linked to increased severity of covid-19 symptoms.
According to the WHO, more than 8 million people die from direct tobacco use annually while 1.2 million die from second-hand smoke exposure including 65,000 children with most tobacco-related deaths occurring in developing countries.
The theme for this year is protecting youth from industry manipulation and preventing them from tobacco and nicotine use so we present some data on young people's tobacco use in Ghana.