World No Tobacco Day 2018: Smoking causes heart attacks too

While the link between smoking and a range of cancers is well known, the World Health Organization warned Thursday there was too little awareness of tobacco's impact on the human heart.

On the occasion of World No Tobacco Day Thursday, the UN health agency hailed that smoking had declined significantly since the year 2000, but warned that there were still far too many people indulging in the dangerous habit.

And it cautioned that research showed there was "a serious lack of knowledge" about the different health risks associated with tobacco.

Tobacco use has been linked to more than seven million deaths worldwide each year, including some 890,000 from breathing in second-hand smoke.

But many people are unaware that nearly half of those deaths, around three million, are due to cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks and stroke, WHO warned.

Smoking unleashes poisonous gases like carbon monoxide, which replaces oxygen in the blood, thereby reducing the availability of oxygen for the heart muscle, WHO said.

In China for instance, a large WHO survey showed that more than 60 per cent of the population is unaware that smoking can cause heart attacks, while in India and Indonesia, more than half of adults are unaware that smoking can cause a stroke.

According to a new WHO report on smoking trends and prevalence, the percentage of people worldwide who indulge in the habit has dropped from 27 per cent in 2000 to 20 per cent in 2016.

Due to population growth, the number of smokers in the world has remained relatively stable at around 1.1 billion.