India’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) estimates that each year about 1.35 million deaths in the country can be directly attributed to tobacco use and its Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS-2) reveals that 28.6% (267 million) adults in India aged 15 and above, use tobacco in some form.
Tobacco use also adversely impacts the economy and a recent WHO report has estimated that the total annual economic costs from all diseases and deaths attributable to tobacco use in India in 2017-18 was a staggering US$ 27.5 billion (approximately Rs 1773 billion).
During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence has shown that smokers are more likely to develop severe disease with COVID-19 as compared to non-smokers.
“To help shift gears from evidence to public action and encourage people to quit tobacco, WHO has launched a year-long global campaign to support at least 100 million people worldwide in their efforts to quit tobacco use, as part of its World No Tobacco Day 2021 campaign. In India, WHO is adopting a multi-pronged strategy combining a media mix that aims to reach out to different target audiences to promote tobacco cessation,” says Dr Roderico H. Ofrin, WHO Representative to India.
As part of its commit to quit initiative combining information with education and awareness through multiple media streams, WHO India has undertaken a series of public health campaigns focusing on: ✅strong tobacco cessation policies; ✅access to cessation services; and ✅awareness on tobacco industry tactics to entice people into addiction.
The social media campaign amplified evidence generated by WHO studies undertaken in 2020 on tobacco economics, taxation and tobacco-free films to advocate for stronger tobacco control policies. The combined outreach of this campaign across all media as of 30 September 2021 is 19.7 million; overall impressions observed were 26.2 million with 2.6 million user engagement; about 118 000 link clicks were captured and around 3.9 million video views generated.
A radio campaign was also undertaken to create top-of-the-mind recall of India’s national tobacco quit-line number and mCessation services, a Government of India initiative which uses mobile technology to enable users to quit tobacco. This awareness campaign focused on rural and semi-urban communities especially youth and tobacco users from 16 states with high burden and prevalence of tobacco use, these include — Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
The combined listenership of this 4-week campaign during May-June 2021 across 169 districts was over 60 million (6 crores).
WHO provides technical support to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) for the implementation of various evidence-based demand and supply related measures outlined in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) and MPOWER policy package.
*1800 11 2356 is the number of the national toll-free National Quitline set-up by the Government of India to provide counselling services to tobacco users who want to quit tobacco
Source: As per IRS 2019-Q4 Individual Database