Hong Kong- A Hong Kong anti-smoking campaigner who for a quarter of a century has been a thorn in the side of the tobacco industry in Asia was Sunday celebrating a major international award for her crusading work. Dr Judith Mackay, labeled one of the three most dangerous people in the world in a leaked tobacco industry document in the 1980s, has received the British Medical Journal Group's first ever lifetime achievement award.

She topped a poll of 10 shortlisted candidates including world-famous heart surgeon Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub, pioneering US kidney doctor Dr Robert William Shrier and Indian rural health campaigner Dr Hanumappa Sudarshan.

The prestigious publication, which attracted more than 7,000 votes for its poll, praised Mackay for her "tireless and courageous campaigning on behalf of patients and public health."

She has been fighting for tougher tobacco controls in Asia since 1984.

The award recognized her as "one of the first tobacco control advocates in Asia" and said she had played a "leading role" in advancing public policy, articulating the harms of tobacco and "exposing the nefarious tactics of the tobacco industry."

She was also instrumental in developing the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, hailedas "one of the most successful international treaties in public health," the award givers noted.

World Health Organization consultant and World Lung Foundation advisor Mackay, whose solo mission to cut Asian smoking levels in the 1980s gradually gained international support and recognition, said she was "just overwhelmed" at the award.

"I have the greatest respect for all my shortlisted colleagues, but I have been extremely touched by the outpouring of support I have received from all over the world - and especially from Hong Kong," she told the German news agency dpa.

"When I started working in tobacco control in Asia in 1984, it was a lonely job, with no career structure and no pay. Few, if any, countries, had even a single person working full-time on tobacco control. I also faced the formidable opposition of the trans-national tobacco companies, who identified Asia as their future," she said.

Mackay, 66, said there had since been a "sea-change in attitudes" towards the fight for stricter tobacco controls in the intervening years but made it clear she believes the battle is still far from won.

"Cigarettes are the only product on the market that when used as directed kill one-third to one-half of its consumers and continue to affect the health of those who don't even smoke," she said.

"They kill more people than car accidents, AIDS and drugs combined - causing one death every six seconds. It is time society stops tolerating a product that poisons its users." (dpa)