Every year, more than 8 million people die from tobacco use. Most tobacco-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, which are often targets of intensive tobacco industry interference and marketing.

Through surveillance and monitoring of tobacco, WHO seeks to improve the availability of surveillance data on tobacco use, exposure and related health outcomes. In 1998, WHO, the United States of America's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA) initiated the Global Tobacco Surveillance System (GTSS).

The purpose of the GTSS is to enhance the capacity of countries to design, implement and evaluate their national comprehensive tobacco action plan and to monitor the key articles of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). Currently, GTSS includes the collection of tobacco-specific data for both youths (13–15 years) and adults (15 years and older) through the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) and Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS). 

Tobacco questions for surveys (TQS), for both adult and youth, have been prepared for countries wanting to include questions on tobacco in their existing or planned NCD risk factor or other population-based surveys. The TQS questions can be used as a standalone survey but are most often integrated in existing surveys (e.g. multirisk factor surveys, national health surveys). Using these questions would help to improve survey comparability over time and harmonize them with international tobacco surveillance and monitoring activities. Finally, WHO supports multirisk factor surveys, namely STEPS and the Global school-based student health survey (GSHS), that contain sections on tobacco use and exposure.