Smoking in Iran annually claims some 50,000 lives, or one every ten minutes, said an official at the health ministry on Monday.
The director of international affairs at Iran's Ministry of Health, Mansour Safaei Farahani, said if the country's present smoking rate continued uncontrolled, in ten years the death toll from smoking would reach an annual toll of 200,000, one every 2.5 seconds, the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
According to a report by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), each year some 4 million people succumb to smoking-related diseases.
Today, cigarettes claim a live once every seven seconds worldwide, said the report, cited by IRNA – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
