World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) is organized every year on May 31 to highlight the health and other risks associated with tobacco use, and advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption globally. WNTD was created by World Health Organization (WHO) in 1987 to draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic and the preventable death and disease it causes.

The focus theme of World No Tobacco Day 2018 is "Tobacco and heart disease." The aim of campaign is to increase awareness on the impact tobacco has on the cardiovascular health of people worldwide and feasible actions that governments and the public can take to reduce the risks to heart health posed by tobacco.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including stroke, are the world’s leading causes of death, and tobacco use is the second leading cause of CVDs, after high blood pressure. Tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure contribute to approximately 12% of all heart disease deaths.

Key Facts-

• Tobacco kills up to half of its users.
• The Tobacco epidemic is one of the major health problems in the world, killing more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 890 000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.

India is the second largest consumer of tobacco globally with approximately one-sixth of the world's tobacco-related deaths. The tobacco problem in India is peculiar due to consumption of variety of smokeless and smoking forms of tobacco along with wide socio-cultural diversity.

According to Global Adult Tobacco Survey-2 (GATS 2016-17), 26.7crore adults in the age group of 15 years and above (29% of the adults) consume tobacco in some form or the other, though the prevalence of tobacco use has reduced by six percentage points from GATS-1(2009-10) to GATS -2.

In compliance with the MPOWER measures suggested by WHO for effective interventions to reduce the demand of tobacco, measures implemented by India include:

• displaying pictorial health warnings in 85% of the display area of the tobacco packs on both the sides; now from1st September 2018,  new sets of specified health warnings have to be used on packs of all tobacco products;
• conduction of second round of GATS;
• substantial investment made under 12^th five year plan for expansion of National Tobacco Control Programme;
• ban on smokeless tobacco products;
• implementation of the tobacco free film and television policy and ;
• strengthening the cessation facilities with the launch of toll-free national tobacco Quitline and mCessation services by Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India in partnership with WHO and ITU (International Telecommunications Union).

This initiative aims to support tobacco users of all categories who want to quit tobacco use towards successful quitting through constant text messaging on mobile phones.

Tobacco users may take the help to quit tobacco at Quit plan and can give a missed call on 011-22901701 for registration or e-register by filling mobile number and e mail ID through www.nhp.gov.in/quit-tobacco .

                                ‘Make Every Day World No Tobacco Day’.

References-

www.who.int/campaigns/

www.who.int/en/

www.who.int/en/news

www.nhp.gov.in/quit-tobacco