Egypt ranked third in the region as 22.4% of the population smokes daily, as per the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2016. Almost half of Egyptian men, exactly 44.7%, smoke on a daily basis, while only 0.2 of the country’s women smoke. Egypt was only topped by Tunisia, at 28.5% and the United Arab Emirates, at 23.4%.
In July, the WHO stated that tobacco kills up to half of its users. Of the people killed from tobacco annually, 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.
According to a paper published in the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, sibling, parent, and peer smoking, as well as exposure to Western media, are all risk factors for smoking in Egypt.
Tobacco use in the Middle East can be dated back to the sixteenth century, however, there is some evidence and some scholars support the argument that tobacco products were used in Egypt as far back as the time of the Pharaohs.
This chart is retrieved from Data Wrapper’s Datariver, with a focus on European and Pacific countries.
