Email
Password
(Forgot Password?)
Pfizer India plans to launch 600 smoking cessation clinics across the country in the next two years in partnership with private sector hospitals and clinics. Pfizer India director (pharmaceutical marketing) Anjan Sen said: “We have already tied up with 150 clinics in 17 cities, including Max Healthcare, and are in talks with more hospitals for partnerships. We are also in talks with the government to use this as a treatment option in the 600 clinics that they plan to set up.”
The government had last year announced to launch same number of clinics. The government clinics will use nicotine replacement therapies (NRT) like chewing gum and patches, along with counselling, to help people quit smoking, a method that doctors say has far less success rate than medication which blocks the receptors in the brain absorbing nicotine.
Jump to full article »
It isn't just cigarette smokers who will feel the impact of Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss's plans to curb smoking; tobacco farmers fear their livelihoods will be threatened by the government's plans to impose further restrictions on smoking and limit tobacco production.
India's commitment
Mr. Ramadoss said on Monday that India was committed to reducing tobacco production by 50 per cent by 2020 in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The tobacco industry in Southeast Asia is systematically obstructing implementation of a global treaty on curbing smoking and tobacco use, a regional advocacy network warned today.
Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance (Seatca) said since it took effect in 2005, implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) in the region has been undermined by insidious tactics of big tobacco companies.
It said abuses by tobacco corporations have ranged from attempting to write tobacco control laws and blocking the passage of key legislations in the Philippines, Laos and Cambodia, and using so-called "corporate social responsibility" to circumvent laws and regulations in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and the Philippines.
The region's governments have been vulnerable to interference through the industry's lobbying, public relations dealings and CSR activities, Seatca said in a statement.
Thousands of street children in Mumbai spend more on tobacco than on food every day, according to a survey of their economic conditions and tobacco consumption.
"Street children spend far more on tobacco than on nutritious food. These children spend more each month on naswar (snuff), mava, gutka (both forms of chewing tobacco) and cigarettes than on meat, almost as much for khaini (powdered tobacco) as for milk, and more for all forms of tobacco except masheri (tobacco paste) than on fruit or eggs," said the survey 'Choosing Tobacco over Food: Daily Struggles for Existence among the Street Children of Mumbai'.
The survey, conducted by Shelter Don Bosco - a Mumbai-based NGO working with street children, is part of a report 'Tobacco and Poverty: Observations from India and Bangladesh', distributed on the third day of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health here.
"Tobacco use is an integral part of life for street children in Mumbai. They start by picking up discarded butts from cigarettes and beedis (small hand rolled cigars), then quickly move on to purchasing tobacco and spending significant sums of their meagre incomes on it. The children also report an array of health effects from tobacco use," the survey said.
A significant finding was that close to half (46.8 percent) of the children in the study sample use gutka and 39.5 percent smoke beedis.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Consumer Healthcare today announced plans to increase the availability of their therapeutic nicotine products to reach more than 800 million people world-wide over the next four years. The announcement was made at the World Conference on Tobacco OR Health (WCTOH) meeting held this year in India, a country on pace to see nearly one million smoking-related deaths per year by 2010(1). Thought leaders from around the globe gather at this triannual conference to discuss global initiatives under way to reduce tobacco use and its extraordinary health toll.
"GSK plans to introduce our quit smoking aids to 85 percent of the world's smokers by 2013. We are committed to finding approaches, in concert with local experts, to maximize the access and impact of our life-saving products," said Raj Mishra, MD, PhD, vice president research and development, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare. "Our hope is that by launching our therapeutic nicotine products globally we will be doing our part to help reduce the global burden from tobacco-related disease by helping more smokers quit."
A World Health Organization (WHO) global tobacco report found that tobacco use was increasing most rapidly in low-income countries due to steady population growth coupled with tobacco industry efforts.
Though use of tobacco is declining in the US compared to developing countries, the habit still costs the country more than $101 billion in health care.
"Annual healthcare costs, both public and private, caused by smoking amount to $96 billion while $5 billion is spent on healthcare related to second-hand smoke. Premature deaths caused by smoking amount to $97 billion in productivity losses," according to the Tobacco Burden Facts on the US, released by the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, at the ongoing 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health in Mumbai Tuesday.
According to the data, the US remains the second largest consumer of cigarettes in the world despite a decline in smoking with the percentage of current US adult smokers (above 18 years) decreasing 17 percent now from 1970.
Eight months after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation banned hookah bars, the matter of enforcing them cropped up again on Monday, at the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.
Union Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, answering a query, said hookah parlours were illegal and those running should be closed down.
After the BMC ban, 30 hookah hubs in the city had been shut down because of action from the civic body, but 26 still manage to function. Answering a query on hookah parlours openly violating the ban, Ramadoss said, "Hookah parlours in any form are illegal and should be banned. According to the law, hookah bars are banned, along with cigarettes. Why are they still open? We will help the BMC to shut down all the hookah parlours."
As per estimates from the BMC's health department, there were 59 hookah bars in the city of which three were shut down when mayor Shubha Raul started her drive. . . .
Dr Prakash Gupta, Director, Healis Sekhsaria Institute for Public Health, and president of the 14th WCTOH, said, "The law clearly states that there should be an enclosed room where there should be no food and beverage servings."
Dow Chemical International Pvt. Ltd. (Dow India) today signed a statement of commitment towards the "Workplace Wellness Initiative: Promoting Smoke-Free Workplaces in India" as part of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health (WCTOH) held in Mumbai today, March 9, 2009. Organized by the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and HRIDAY, in collaboration with World Economic Forum and American Cancer Society, the commitment acknowledges the harmful effects of tobacco and the benefits of a smoke-free environment such as reduced incidences of sickness, injuries and fire damage.
Under the commitment, Dow India reiterates its promise to conform to the Government of India's smoke-free workplaces law which came into effect on October 2, 2008, aimed at creating a safer environment for employees. The Company will also support employee tobacco cessation efforts by providing education materials, activities, and cessation services
US President Barack Obama has come under attack at the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health here for smoking in public - and urged to kick the habit.
Obama was singled out at the meet among successful men with a smoking habit.
Anti-smoking activists, doctors and experts described Obama's smoking as an "irresponsible" act taking into account his influential public persona.
"I was not aware that Obama smokes. It was shocking for me to know this," a public health activist from Jordan, Kawkab Shishani, told IANS.
Shishani, a delegate, said smoking by a world leader like Obama sends a wrong message. "What would the young learn from him? Obama should give up smoking sooner than later."
"It is better if Obama did not smoke in public. After all he is a role model for others," said Monique Lalonde, a health promotion agent from the Montreal Public Health Department in Canada.
Another anti-smoking activist, Omar El Shahwy from Egypt, said Obama should stop smoking immediately.
Getting people to quit smoking is the most effective way to slow the death rate among tobacco users in countries including China and India, the world’s biggest tobacco producers, researchers said today.
Tobacco use may cause about 1 million deaths a year in India from 2010 unless steps are taken to encourage more people to shed the habit, Prabhat Jha, a researcher at the Toronto- based Centre for Global Health Research, said in Mumbai at the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health.
“Cessation among adults is the best way to prevent the death rates,” Richard Peto, an Oxford University professor, told the conference. “Smoking-related deaths may otherwise increase to 450 million by 2050.”
Tobacco use is one of the world’s biggest public health threats, killing one in 10 adults, or 5.4 million a year globally, according to the World Health Organization. More than 1 billion people on the planet smoke, the Geneva-based organization says. . . .
The world tobacco conference, the first to be held in a developing country after China in 1997, is being sponsored among others by the Bloomberg Family Foundation’s “Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use,” known as the Bloomberg Initiative.
The Bloomberg Initiative supports tobacco control in China, India, Indonesia, the Russian Federation and Bangladesh.
India next week hosts a major world tobacco control conference, bringing experts from across the globe at a time of mounting concern about smoking in developing countries and among women.
Organisers of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco or Health hope the five-day event in Mumbai from Sunday will help develop new strategies to tackle a public health problem that claims 5.4 million lives a year worldwide.
The issue is seen as particularly acute in India, which is the world's second largest producer and consumer of tobacco and has never had a large-scale tobacco control campaign.
"We all realise that it's now time for the focus of tobacco control to shift to developing countries," conference president Prakash C. Gupta told a news conference in the city Tuesday.
Today World Lung Foundation and the American Cancer Society published The Tobacco Atlas, Third Edition and released an online version of the document at TobaccoAtlas.org. This comprehensive volume of research and its accompanying website graphically display how tobacco is devastating both global health and economies.
A $500 Billion Hole in Global Economy
According to The Tobacco Atlas, tobacco's estimated $500 billion drain on the world economy exceeds the total combined annual expenditure on health in all low-and middle-income countries. The economic costs come as a result of lost productivity, misused resources, ineffective taxation and premature death:
* Because 25 percent of smokers die and many more become ill during their most productive years, income loss devastates families and communities. . . .
The Tobacco Atlas and TobaccoAtlas.org were launched at a press conference at the World Conference On Tobacco OR Health in Mumbai, India.
The 14th World Conference on "Tobacco or Health" will be held in the city from March 8 to highlight the growing menace of tobacco use.
The conference will showcase the problems caused due to tobacco use, P C Gupta, president of the conference, told reporters here.
"This will give us an opportunity to focus on the complex tobacco problem in the country, which has the largest spectrum of tobacco products - from industrial ones like gutkha to custom-made products like betel quid," Gupta said.
The American Cancer Society announced today the winners of the 2009 Luther L. Terry Awards for Exemplary Leadership in Tobacco Control. The awards are named for the late United States Surgeon General Luther L. Terry, M.D., who led the landmark 1964 Surgeon General's Report which connected tobacco use to lung cancer and other illnesses. Dr. Terry's courageous and groundbreaking work established the foundation for public health scrutiny of the dangers of tobacco use. The awards are presented triennially - the initial awards were presented at the 11th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health in Chicago, Illinois, USA, in 2000, with subsequent awards presentations at the 12th and 13th World Conferences on Tobacco OR Health in 2003 and 2006 respectively.
"Given the momentum of the World Health Organization (WHO)'s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), currently ratified by 161 countries including Costa Rica, Croatia, Guinea-Bissau, Iraq, Lao People's Democratic Republic, and Nepal, and the growing global movement to combat unprecedented and aggressive worldwide tobacco marketing tactics, the timeliness of recognizing these achievers' contributions is particularly relevant," said chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society, John R. Seffrin, Ph.D. . . .
These awards will recognize outstanding worldwide achievement in the field of tobacco control and will be presented during a special ceremony on Wednesday, March 11, in Mumbai, India, as part of the 14th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health. The winners are as follows:
* The United States' Stanton Arnold Glantz, Ph.D., will receive the Distinguished Career Award.
* The Ministry of Health of the Government of Uruguay will be given the award for Exemplary Leadership by a Government Ministry.
* The United States' Ronald M. Davis, M.D., and India's K. Srinath Reddy, M.D., D.M., M.Sc., F.A.M.S., will receive the award for Outstanding Individual Leadership.
* The InterAmerican Heart Foundation will receive the Outstanding Organization award.
* K. Michael Cummings, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the United States will receive the award for Outstanding Research Contribution.
* The United States' Dileep G. Bal, M.D., M.P.H., M.S., and Thailand's Hatai Chitanondh, M.D., F.I.C.S., F.R.C.S. (T.), will be given the award for Outstanding Community Service.
The American Lung Association of Hawaii cautioned college students today against a growing campus fad of smoking with water pipes, called hookahs.
Association President Sterling Yee said in a news release that water pipe smoking potentially is more dangerous than cigarette smoking because users are exposed to larger amounts of nicotine, carbon monoxide and other toxins.
However, a couple who operates the only licensed hookah service in Hawaii says using a water pipe is not smoking, which they oppose, but is "vaporizing."
"When you light up a cigar or cigarette or any type of tobacco or nontobacco, you're causing combustion to occur," said Renee Hollison Betamour. No combustion is involved with smoking a hookah, she said. "It's closer to aromatic therapy."
Several sessions were devoted to hookah smoking at a recent World Tobacco Conference in Washington, D.C., said Bert Kobayashi, who attended with Debbie Odo as Hawaii Lung Association representatives. . . .
But Renee and Mohammad Betamour say water pipe smokers are only inhaling steam. "It's closer to cooking than smoking," Renee said.