BMJ  2005;331:191-192 (23 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7510.191

Commentary

Making the transition to action

Eva Kralikova, lecturer1, Erzsebet Podmaniczky, president, International Relations Committee2, Hanna Stypulkowska-Misiurewicz, international relations officer3, Elena Kavcova, lecturer4, Aurelijus Veryga, lecturer5, Tanith Muller, director6

1 Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 2 Hungarian Medical Chamber, Budapest, Hungary, 3 Polish Chamber of Physicians and Dentists, Warsaw, Poland, 4 Department of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, Martin Faculty Hospital, Martin, Slovak Republic, 5 Department of Preventive Medicine, Kaunas University, Kaunas, Lithuania, 6 Tobacco Control Resource Centre, BMA, Edinburgh EH2 1LL

Correspondence to: T Muller tmuller@bma.org.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The news on smoking from the European Union's eastern frontiers is better than expected, with no evidence of a future gulf in lung cancer mortality between old and new member states.1 However, the special challenges faced by the eastern transitional economies—such as aggressive tobacco marketing, rapid liberalisation of the tobacco trade, and the political influence of the leading tobacco companies2—remain. And a closer look at the study by Didkowska et al1 shows just how much work is still needed throughout the EU to reduce deaths from lung cancer and from other tobacco related disease.

The tobacco epidemic cannot be allowed to proceed without active intervention. Tobacco remains Europe's single biggest cause of preventable death. Lung cancer still accounts for more than a quarter of the EU's male cancer deaths and a rising number of deaths in women,3 and tobacco related diseases cause 650 000 unnecessary deaths every year in . . . [Full text of this article]


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