Smoking cancers cause 5% of deaths in Germany

(May 29, 2003 - Reuters Health)

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters Health) - Cancers of the lungs and throat that are linked to smoking killed more than 40,000 Germans in 2001, accounting for nearly five percent of all deaths, according to official figures released Wednesday.

In its latest report, the German Statistics Office said that lung cancer remains by far the biggest tobacco-related cancer killer, ending the lives of 38,525 people in 2001. Cancers of the larynx killed 1,484 people, and cancer of the trachea killed 44.

About 34 percent of Germany's adult population smokes, according to data from the World Health Organization. The latest figures relate only to cancers, although smoking is a known or probable cause of 25 different diseases, including heart disease, bronchitis and emphysema.

Overall, the number of tobacco-related cancer deaths in 2001 was down slightly from 2000, but Thomas Graf, spokesman for the Statistics Office, told Reuters Health that it is not possible to say whether the decline in 2001 represents the beginning of a downward trend.

Tobacco-related deaths for German men have been declining slightly for about 10 years, but have been rising for women. Nevertheless, nearly three times as many men (29,884) as women (10,169) died from the three cancers in 2001.

The German Health and Social Services Ministry has started an anti-smoking campaign that includes tobacco tax increases, stricter enforcement of laws against selling to minors and educational programs.

But Nigel Gray, senior researcher at the Milan, Italy-based European Institute of Oncology, which studies tobacco epidemiological issues, said that even if the anti-smoking campaign is successful, it will have little effect on cancer deaths for 10 to 20 years.

But it would have an immediate positive impact on tobacco-related heart diseases, he said.