The number of young Chinese picking up smoking habit has more than doubled from previous years, despite health education convincing them not to smoke, a Chinese newspaper reported Wednesday. A survey conducted among 40,000 students in Beijing showed 17 percent of students at the primary and secondary level smoked cigarettes last year, up from 7 percent from 2005. The survey found 68 percent of teenage smokers are boys, and 77 percent are light smokers who consume less than five cigarettes per day, China Daily reported, citing the survey results from Beijing's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Among the respondents, 23 percent of boys and 11 percent of girls tried smoking in 2008, compared with 11 percent of boys and three percent of girls in 2005.
13 million abortions in China each year: report (July 30, 2009, Reuters)
Some 13 million abortions are carried out in China each year, in part because there is little education about contraception or disease for the rising numbers of young people who are having sex, state media said on Thursday. Fewer than one in three callers to a Shanghai hotline knew how to avoid pregnancy, and only one in five were informed about venereal disease, the official China Daily quoted a survey by the city's 411 Army Hospital saying. Until the 1990s, doctors asked for women's marital status at abortion clinics, which were part of the family planning system that limited urban couples to one child. Now, government data shows that nearly two thirds of women who have abortions are between 20 and 29, and most are single, the paper said. Birth control information is mainly given to young couples.
Some 13 million abortions are carried out in China each year, in part because there is little education about contraception or disease for the rising numbers of young people who are having sex, state media said on Thursday. Fewer than one in three callers to a Shanghai hotline knew how to avoid pregnancy, and only one in five were informed about venereal disease, the official China Daily quoted a survey by the city's 411 Army Hospital saying. Until the 1990s, doctors asked for women's marital status at abortion clinics, which were part of the family planning system that limited urban couples to one child. Now, government data shows that nearly two thirds of women who have abortions are between 20 and 29, and most are single, the paper said. Birth control information is mainly given to young couples.
