UK, Denmark top Euro female lung cancer deaths (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

UK, Denmark top Euro female lung cancer deaths
by Patricia Reaney
Source: Reuters, Friday, 9/10/99

Friday, September 10, 1999

LONDON, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Women smokers in Britain are five times more
likely to die of lung cancer than those in many other European countries,
a leading cancer expert said on Saturday.

Professor Gordon McVie, director general of Britain's Cancer Research
Campaign, said only Denmark had a higher rate of female lung cancer deaths
than Britain but he warned other countries would catch up because more
women were taking up the habit.

``The epidemic of lung cancer deaths has already hit the UK but I am
frightened that the number of women dying from the disease elsewhere in
Europe has yet to peak,'' he told Reuters.

``It's a problem waiting to happen for the rest of the countries in
Europe,'' he said.

More British and Danish women are dying of the disease now because they
started smoking earlier, in the 1940s and 50s, than their European
counterparts. Lung cancer and other tobacco-related diseases can take
decades to develop.

McVie, who will raise the problem at the European Cancer Conference in
Vienna on Saturday, said tobacco companies were targeting young women.

``They have got to recruit new smokers and they are doing that very well
among women in the UK, as they have already done in the United States, and
there is every indication it will happen in Spain and in places where it
was unthinkable to smoke 20 years ago. That hasn't taken its toll yet but
it will,'' he said.

He hopes health professionals attending the conference organised by the
Federation of European Cancer Societies will push for stronger laws
against tobacco advertising and promotion to children to curtail the
problem.

``I'm quite confident we will have some effect. We will arm them with some
data and we will give them support,'' he said.

Figures compiled by the Union Internationale contre Cancer (UICC), a
Geneva-based, non-government association, showed female smokers in Britain
were five times more likely to die than women in Spain, four times more
than those in Portugal and France and had double the chance of female
smokers in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Germany and Sweden.

``Statistics also show that in the UK, although the number of women of all
ages who smoke is levelling off, the number of young women and girls
taking up the habit is rising. So, unless something is done quickly, we
may face another glut in our own country,'' said McVie.

He said that in Spain the number of female smokers had jumped from 17
percent in 1978 to 27 percent in 1995.

Cancer experts predict half a billion people alive in the world today will
eventually be killed by tobacco if current smoking patterns continue.