JakartaPost-Jan 25, 2024
The number of tobacco users in the country has continued to increase, a recent World Health Organization (WHO) report has found, running counter to a global decline tobacco consumption in recent years. The report, published on Jan. 16, found that 38.5 percent of Indonesians over the age of 14 used tobacco products in 2022. This was up more than 2 percentage points from the country’s 2020 figure and up 5 percentage points from 2015. The WHO expects the figure to rise to 38.7 percent by the end of the decade. More than 70 percent Indonesian males over the age of 14 used tobacco in 2022. In 2010, the figure was 63 percent. The smoking rate of Indonesian women over the age of 14, meanwhile, dropped from 7.2 percent in 2010 to 3.4 percent in 2022. These increases occurred amid a decline in global tobacco use. The WHO report found that about 21 percent of people worldwide used tobacco in 2022, compared to 26.4 percent in 2010. The United Nations’ health body said the “tobacco epidemic” was one of the biggest public health threats the world had ever faced, as it led to 8 million deaths per year. More than 7 million of those annual deaths were the result of direct tobacco use, it said, while some 1.3 million nonsmokers lost their lives per year because of exposure to second-hand smoke. In Indonesia, more than 225,000 people die each year of smoking-related diseases, according to 2020 data from the WHO. A 2019 report estimated that smoking-related diseases put a burden of at least Rp 27.7 trillion (US$1.7 billion) on the National Health Insurance (JKN) system. Read more at: https://www.thejakartapost.com/indonesia/2024/01/25/more-indonesians-smoking-bucking-global-trend.html.
