Hirotomo Sasaki writes:

Adults have some health problems: Noncommunicable diseases such as cancer and heart disease account for about some million deaths, divided more or less equally between the developing and the developed world. But, in developing countries because there is little or no medicine, there is a tendency for many people to be sick. Some preventable deaths happen in the developing world. Poor countries have three times more preventable deaths than rich ones. The majority of cancer victims live in the developing world and two-thirds of future cancer cases over the next 25 years will occur there. Smoking is the major reason for some diseases; smoking kills 6 people a minute. Smoking is the world's largest single preventable cause of illness and death. It already kills 3 million people a year and is expected to kill 10 million by the year 2020. An additional problem is that in Africa a pregnant woman is 13.5 times more likely to die in childbirth than one in Europe, while the mothers of more than half of the babies born in the least developed countries have no prenatal care.

The Japanese government helps poor countries by way of the Overseas Development Agency, etc. These organizations support medical care. Doctors and nurses must go there to be volunteers. But, money and manpower are not enough. The probability of developing cancer is the same between developed countries and developing ones, but the latter do not have enough medical institutions and medicines. Japanese medical companies must send medicines and personnel. These volunteers can teach people in poor countries the knowledge of diseases and the way of prevention, and how to stop AIDS by distributing contraceptives. Especially women in Africa are discriminated by men. Japanese doctors can support these women more and inform men and women worldwide about the facts that will help them to improve their health.

As mentioned, smoking is a problem in the developed and developing worlds. It makes not only the smoker sick but people around the smoker sick. Lung cancer's cause is smoking. Japanese academic society has some power, so it ought to bring pressure on cigarette companies. Doctors can tell adults and kids the harm of cigarettes, but only doing this will have little effect because cigarettes are promoted on mass media. Next year this promotion of cigarettes will disappear, and this will bear fruit in fighting the popularity of smoking cigarettes. People in the developing world does not have so many forms of entertainment and amusement people in developed countries like Japan, so people in the developing world smoke to amuse themselves and kill time. These people have to work so much and have so much stress that the Japanese medical community should help by teaching them other ways of decreasing stress beside smoking.

The reason that I am interested in cigarette smoking is that it is very common and the smoking habit is easily acquired. To stop people at a young age from smoking, adults, like me, not only need to regulate but also become role models. When I see friends smoke, for example, I sometimes have to tell them about the bad effects of smoking. Even though they may ignore what I say, I feel that it is their problem but not only theirs, but a problem for people around them who may be are harmed by passive smoke intake. I think smokers need more and more to think about not only their health but also the health of those around them.