Water pipe smoking will contribute to about 1 million new lung cancer cases globally by 2050, with the Western Pacific region bearing the brunt, according to a study led by a World Health Organization (WHO) research agency that was recently presented in Hong Kong.

The study, which is yet to be published, was headed by Dr Mahdi Sheikh, a scientist of the early detection, prevention and infections branch at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). It estimated that there would be 82 million new lung cancer cases around the world between 2025 and 2050, with 944,700 or 1.1 per cent of them caused by water pipe smoking.

“One per cent does not seem a lot, but when you translate it into numbers, it’s 1 million cases – when we want to save lives, every life matters,” Sheikh told the South China Morning Post on the sidelines of the World Cancer Congress, which was held in Hong Kong for the first time in late September.

“Most of these countries have a low or medium human development index … it means that the burden is going to cluster in the countries with the least resources, which could bear the least burden of cancer.”