Cancer claims 6 million lives each year, including 1 million due to cancer of the lungs and airways. Worldwide lung cancer is the biggest single cause of cancer deaths in men. Breast cancer is the main cause of cancer deaths among women in developed countries and the second cause in the developing world after cervical cancer. 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. Overall 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. Ninety-nine per cent of deaths from communicable diseases and from maternal, perinatal and neonatal causes occur in the developing world. A pregnant woman in Africa 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. Twenty million women undergo unsafe abortions each year and 70,000 die as a result. More than half of the world's women now use a contraceptive method compared to fewer than 10 per cent in 1960.