Earlier people used to get cancer from consumption of tobacco but now there is a rare disease identified due to excessive consumption of tobacco - Buerger's Disease. Smokers in India consumed an average of 8.2 cigarettes per day, the number of cigarettes smoked annually has grown to more than 6 trillion and there are approximately 120 million smokers in India while according to the World Health Organization (WHO), India is home to 12% of the world's smokers.
More than 1 million die each year due to tobacco in India and according to a 2002 WHO estimate, 25% of adult males in India smoke. There are almost 267 million tobacco users in India where among adults (age 15+), 28.6% of the population currently uses tobacco products (men 42.4%; women 14.2%) and among youth (ages 13–15), 8.5% currently use some form of tobacco (boys 9.6%; girls 7.4%).
What is Buerger's Disease?
In an interview with HT Lifestyle, Ruchit Shah, Interventional Cardiologist at Mumbai's Masina Hospital, informed, “Buerger’s disease is also called Thromboangiitis Obliterans. It is a disease in which the blood vessels of the hands and feet, they get inflamed, swollen and subsequently blocked, leading to stoppage of blood supply at the ends of the fingers or the toes. It may initially manifest as tingling numbness followed by pale discoloration of the fingers followed by a complete loss of blood supply, which may lead to an inactive finger and finally may lead to gangrene formation.”