SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, May 30: On the occasion of World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) tomorrow, the Jharkhand health department would launch a 60-day special campaign for tobacco-free youth from May 31 to July 31.
The campaign is being launched on the directive of the Union Health Ministry with a focus on youth by creating awareness and preventing initiation of tobacco use and assisting to quit.
A senior official said that on the occasion of WNTD, the No Tobacco Pledge would be administered to people at all Health and Wellness Centres across the state from May 31st to June 21 ( World Yoga Day).
Since last year (2022) Jharkhand had got the WNTD global award from World Health Organization (WHO) for outstanding work in controlling tobacco, all eyes are now set on the achievement of the state in 2023.
Additional Chief Secretary (ACS) Health Arun Kumar Singh had in 2022 felicitated officials of Ranchi, Bokaro and Koderma for best-performing districts in the state for implementing various activities of the National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP) in 2021-22 sessions.
So far 10 districts out of 24 in Jharkhand including Ranchi, Khunti, Jamshedpur, Saraikela, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Hazaribagh, Ramgarh, Godda and Westm Singhbhum have been declared Smoking Free Districts.
Besides it, the Schooling Education and Literacy Department in collaboration with Socio Economic and Educational Development Society (SEEDS) in November 2022 also launched a special programme of making 40 schools ( five government and five private) in four districts Ranchi, Dhanbad, East Singhbhum and Bokaro tobacco-free.
Though senior officers of the state health department officially did not share the planning of the health department, the Jharkhand government’s technical support partner in NTCP, SEEDS executive president Dipak Kumar Mishra said that this year’s theme is ‘We Need Food not Tobacco’, so we would focus in the campaign on youth to keep them away from tobacco.
“Jharkhand has made a massive leap in reducing the prevalence rate (from 50.1% to 38.9%) but the concerning point is that in Jharkhand 5.1% per cent of minors between the age group of 13 to 15 years still use tobacco. More alarming is that per day in the state estimated 136 minors start to use of tobacco”, said Mishra, executive director of SEEDS.
