According to Ben Bland, writing in the British Medical Journal, More than half of male Chinese doctors smoke, reflecting the widespread consumption of tobacco in the country, which is the world's biggest producer of cigarettes.
The health ministry hopes to convince doctors to quit the habit and set a better example for the 350 million Chinese people who smoke.
Ten medical schools and 10 medical associations have signed up to the campaign and pledged to make their premises smoke-free. They have also agreed to promote tobacco control among students and doctors.
"The aim is to develop smoke-free hospitals and create a generation of tobacco control experts in the medical community who will champion a reduction in smoking," Sarah England, a tobacco control expert in the World Health Organization's Beijing office, told the BMJ. "We want doctors to be role models and advocates of good, healthy behaviour, rather than exposing patients and other staff to a toxic substance."
China's health minister, Chen Zhu, was reported by state media as saying, "Medical workers and those who take the decisions regarding people's health should take the lead to quit smoking and completely ban indoor smoking to set a good example for their patients and others who look up to them. International experience has it that when doctors give up smoking, it encourages a lot of others to kick the habit."
China has the highest rate of smoking among doctors in the world, according to the China Preventive Medicine Association, with 56.8% of male doctors using tobacco. In the general population 57.4% of men and 2.6% of women smoke, according to the latest national survey, which was completed in 2002.
Smoking is one of the biggest single causes of premature death in China, with 673 000 people dying of smoking-related illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease in 2005, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine (2009;360:150-9, http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/360/2/150).
