There have been few statements by the new health minister making some advance pledges on WNTD. With the theme of this year, we continue to think about tobacco being the biggest killer but the statistics suggests otherwise.
Air pollution is a leading cause of death and as a new method of modelling, the effects of various sources of outdoor air pollution on death rates, the researchers found that it caused an estimated 8.8 million extra deaths globally rather than the previously estimated 4.5 million, according to the study which appeared in the European Health Journal.
To put this into perspective, this means that air pollution causes more extra deaths a year than tobacco smoking, which the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates was responsible for an extra 7.2 million deaths in 2015.
In Pakistan, there seems to be no government intervention nor have any social awareness campaigns which can inform citizens how to protect themselves from the dangers of air pollution and its negative impacts on human health.
Meanwhile, tobacco known as a killer and there exists enough regulatory framework to curb tobacco use, however air pollution despite being much bigger threat is being ignored and millions of Pakistanis inadvertently fall prey to air pollution as opposed to tobacco use which is voluntary.
The government should focus on areas where a real improvement can be brought about in people's lives and not just join a bandwagon of international anti-tobacco rhetoric.