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• Tobacco use among adults in Bangladesh reaches 43.3% 

Use of tobacco among adults in Bangladesh has increased to 43.3 percent this year, higher than the 37 percent of 2004, despite massive campaign and enactment of law, local media reported on Wednesday.

The report, titled "The Global Adult Tobacco Survey Bangladesh Report-2009" showed a total of 41.3 million people in the South Asian country are now in the habit of using tobacco -- either in the form of smoking or chewing, said a report of the leading English newspaper The Daily Star Wednesday.

According to the study, which was conducted on 11,200 households by the World Health Organization in association with the Bangladeshi government, 58 percent of the respondents are male and 28.7 percent are female. The prevalence of tobacco use in rural areas is 45.1 percent and 38.1 percent in urban area, it said.

The report also revealed an estimated 1 percent of the national income in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) is spent on purchase of cigarettes and 0.4 percent on bidis (a kind of locally manufactured tobacco).

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