Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Awareness needed on bad effects of tobacco: Collector

COIMBATORE: Concerted efforts by the Government to stop promotional advertisements of tobacco products and sensitisation drives have led to a decline in the number of new tobacco users.

While this is an encouraging sign, more awareness on the ill-effects needs to be generated to wean the existing users from smoking or chewing tobacco, District Collector P. Umanath said here on Wednesday.

Opening a Tobacco Cessation Centre at G. Kuppuswamy Naidu Memorial Hospital, Dr. Umanath said the habit of smoking had thrived because a social stigma had not been attached to it, unlike in the case of alcohol consumption.

There was not much pressure on a smoker from the people around to quit the habit. Apart from addiction, this was the other factor that contributed to people continuing to use tobacco products.

The Collector termed the opening of the centre as a rare initiative that was the need of the hour.

People needed help to stop using tobacco. So such guidance centres became very relevant to the drive against tobacco use, he pointed out.

“Give wide publicity on the centre as people should know of such a facility that can save them from the dangers posed by tobacco use,” he told the hospital.

Dean of the hospital Ramkumar Raghupathy said Tobacco Cessation Centres were few in number across the country and the centre opened here on Wednesday was only the 19th in the country.

Such centres were important in disseminating information to the people on the cancer in the mouth, aesophagus, lungs and the heart diseases that tobacco could cause.

“Many legal battles have brought out the ill-effects of tobacco. World Health Organisation reports say 65 per cent of the men smoke and 20 per cent chew tobacco. The Tobacco Cessation Centre has been opened with the view that valuable lives should not go up in smoke,” he said.

The centre was a joint initiative of the hospital, the Valavadi Narayanaswamy Cancer Centre (VNCC) attached to it and the Coimbatore Cancer Foundation and the Confederation of Indian Industry.

Counselling, nicotine rehabilitation therapy and drug treatment would form the individual intervention. Exhibitions and distribution of handbills or booklets would constitute the sensitisation component.

Explaining the objective of the centre, Consultant Medical Oncologist said the VNCC not only focussed on treating cancer but also in preventing it. The opening of the cessation centre reflected this objective.

About 12 crore people smoked cigarettes or other products and three crore used non-smoking tobacco.

The world recorded the sale of 5.5 trillion cigarettes and 10 lakh cancer deaths every year.

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