A total of 341 deaths last year were related to smoking – an average of nearly one a day – and 241 of the people who died were men, Charmaine Gauci, director of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, said yesterday.

Addressing a joint press conference on the EU’s “Help, For a Life Without Tobacco” campaign, Dr Gauci said it is difficult to gauge the number of deaths directly caused by smoking.

Tobacco smoke can cause heart disease, lung disease and a number of cancers, said Dr Gauci, adding that it was of concern that the number of young people taking up the habit is on the increase.

Smoking can cause heart attacks and stroke. It slows the blood flow, cutting off oxygen to feet and hands. Some smokers end up having their limbs amputated.

Smoking causes disease and is a slow way to die. The strain put on the body by smoking often causes years of suffering. People with emphysema, for instance – an illness that slowly rots the lungs – often get bronchitis again and again, and suffer lung and heart failure.

Dr Gauci noted that when people quit smoking, they find it easier to breathe within three days, and lung function increases after three months. And after a year, the extra risk of coronary heart disease is reduced to half that of a smoker.

The press conference was also addressed by Joe Cassar, parliamentary secretary for health, Joanna Drake, head of the European Commission representation in Malta, and Anne Buttigieg, who managed the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Department’s anti-tobacco unit.

They explained that the European Commission took it as one of their major tasks to make citizens aware of the dangers of smoking and passive smoking.

Every year, 650,000 deaths in the EU are related to smoking and the “Help” campaign was welcomed by health officials in many countries as a real support to their actions and initiatives.

Since the start of the campaign in 2005, EU countries have adopted new legislation to ban smoking in public places, places of work, and schools.

Malta was one of the first countries worldwide to adopt the smoking ban in public places, and this has certainly contributed to lower levels of tobacco smoke in the air.

However, as Ms Buttigieg pointed out, a lot still has to be done in terms of enforcement. She also stressed the importance of anti-smoking campaigns such as “Help”, which raise awareness on the harmful effects of carbon monoxide (CO), a toxic gas produced by smoking any form of tobacco.

The “Help” campaign included a study, the “Help-COmets study”, which was a survey of 221,650 smokers and non-smokers across the EU.

Over the two years of CO testing, the second analysis of the survey shows a decrease in lung pollution by carbon monoxide in non-smokers.

The survey also showed that people who smoke one to five cigarettes a day have a higher level of CO in their bloodstream than the maximum level accepted for air quality, which is 8.5 parts per million (ppm).