The minister of Health, José Gomes Temporão, and the president of IBGE, Eduardo Pereira Nunes, receive today 9March 31) a prize...

The minister of Health, José Gomes Temporão, and the president of IBGE, Eduardo Pereira Nunes, receive today 9March 31) a prize for the implementation of the Special Tobacco Survey (Petab), whose results were published in November 2009.

The prize is awarded by the Pan-American Health Organization (Opas) and the Foundation Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), partners in the conduction of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), an international survey that served as a the basis for Petab. Brazil was one of the 14 countries[1] that participated in the project of a survey about the use of tobacco products in persons older than 15.

Petab was conducted by the Department of Work and Income (Coren) of IBGE, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, coordinated, in the scope of the ministry, and the technical performance of the National Institute of Cancer (Inca). The international project of GATS also involves the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (USA), with financial support by the Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The prize-giving ceremony, at 10 o’clock, in Rio de Janeiro (500, Chile Avenue, 2^nd floor auditorium), Will count on the presence of CDC representative in Brazil, Verla Neslund; of the Gats coordinator, Samira Asma, and of the representative of Opas in Brazil, Diego Victoria.

The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies tobacco use as a life-threatening factor that must be fought with high priority, considering the high incidence of death associated with tobacco use in the whole world. The conduction of GATS - and in Brazil, of Petab - aimed at the production of data about the use tobacco and its derivatives, and comprise, together with other surveys, a database to subsidize the adoption of policies relative to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, of which Brazilian government is signatory.

With results about the level of major regions and federation units, besides data on total Brazil and urban and rural national situations, Petab offers relevant information for the most complete portrait of the diversified Brazilian reality and the monitoring of tobacco use in national level. Thus, it tries to meet two objectives: subsidize national policies relative to the theme and integrate the GATS project, aiming at the international comparability of these statistics.

According to Petab, applied to a subsample of 51 thousand households of Pnad 2008 (National Household Sample Survey), with selection of specific informer, approximately 24.6 million Brazilians aged 15 or older used to smoke tobacco derivatives in 2008, that is, 17.2% of the population in this age group. Percentages of smokers were bigger among men (21.6%), among persons aged 45-64 (22.7%), among residents of the South region (19.0%), those who lived in the rural area (20.4%), those with less schooling (25.0% among those without instruction or with less than a year of schooling) and those with the lowest household income per capita (19.9% among those with no income or with less than ¼ minimum wage). The survey also showed that almost all smokers (93.0%) affirmed to know that cigarettes can cause serious diseases and that little more than half of them (52.1%) affirmed to think of quitting or planned to quit smoking.

The core questions of Petab relative to the condition of users of tobacco products were also applied to the complete sample of households and persons aged 15 or older of Pnad 2008. These results are being published today, in the context of publishing of the Health Supplement.

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[1] Besides Brazil, Bangladesh, China, Philippines, India, Mexico, Egypt, Poland, Russia, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay and Vietnam.