The Hindu : Kerala / Pathanamthitta News : Helping children to keep away from tobacco

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 15, 2005

Kerala

Kerala - Pathanamthitta

Helping children to keep away from tobacco

Radhakrishnan Kuttoor

Pathanamthitta District Cancer Care Centre taking up awareness programme

PATHANAMTHITTA: Small shops selling pan-masalas containing tobacco are mushrooming in the State, posing a major health hazard. To contain the threat, an anti-tobacco awareness programme for high-school students will be launched in Pathanamthitta soon.

The District Cancer Care Centre in Kozhencherry, identified as a model institution for implementing the National Cancer Control Programme by the Union Ministry of Health and the World Health Organisation (WHO), is taking up the programme.

Director of the centre K.G. Sasidharan Pillai and the oncologist N. Vijayakumar told The Hindu that the project was aimed at creating an awareness among high-school students on the ill effects of tobacco products, pan-masalas in particular, and thereby, involving the students, as well as voluntary organisations, in anti-tobacco campaigns.

Dr. Vijayakumar said WHO statistics showed that 65 per cent of men and 33 per cent of women in the country used tobacco. Tobacco consumption was a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and cancer. That use of tobacco led to pre-cancerous lesions, such as leukoplakia and oral sub-mucous fibrosis, and eventually, to oral cancer was well established, he added.

Tobacco consumption continues to be on the rise in different parts of the country, making it a major public health problem, despite all the efforts to prevent this scourge.

According to Dr. Vijayakumar, the State has witnessed a change in the trend of tobacco use following the introduction of newer products during the past few years. This development has also changed the age pattern of users, with adolescents increasingly getting addicted to tobacco.

Smoking and betel-quid chewing were the common forms of tobacco consumption till the emergence of pan-masalas in attractive aluminium, or plastic, sachets.

Pan-masalas have conquered the Indian tobacco market, exposing its users to lethal diseases over the past decade.

Preventable scourge

The records available with the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC), Thiruvananthapuram, show that 48 per cent of cancer cases among men and 14 per cent among women in the capital district are tobacco-related cancers, which are completely preventable.

The RCC study has also found that an alarming number of youngsters in the State, particularly in rural areas, are addicted to pan-masalas, which may result in an epidemic of oral cancer cases in the near future.

Smoking and chewing of tobacco are widely prevalent in highly literate Kerala, despite court orders banning smoking in public places and sale of tobacco products to children aged below 18.

Dr. Pillai said a study conducted by the District Cancer Care Centre had found that lack of awareness on the ill effects of tobacco consumption, especially among the young and the working class in rural areas, was a major cause of tobacco addiction in the district.

He said the centre would soon launch anti-tobacco awareness programmes in high schools in the district, besides introducing the concept of tobacco cessation among science club members of select schools.

Dr. Pillai said the project would be implemented in 31 Government and 69 aided high schools, and not fewer than 24,000 children covered.

He said experts from the RCC would lead the anti-tobacco awareness programme to be conducted with the help of audiovisual slides, interactive sessions and so on in the next two years.

The RCC would also provide a special one-day training programme for select group of science club members from different schools at its Tobacco Cessation Clinic (TCC) in Thiruvananthapuram, with a view to set up satellite clinics at select schools.

The satellite clinics would help students give up use of tobacco and guide them in times of need. Complicated cases, if any, would be referred to the TCC for behavioural counselling and de-addiction treatment, he added.

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