Smoking is such a habit that it destroys your health from within. Due to this, the risk of serious diseases like cancer also increases. To solve this problem and to spread awareness about how harmful smoking addiction is for the human body, WHO has shared special guidelines.
The World Health Organization (WHO) of the United Nations (UN) on Tuesday issued guidelines for the first time for those who wish to quit tobacco addiction. In which many types of initiatives have been talked about. The whole mission has been kept to make each other aware through messages and digital interventions.
This is the percentage of people smoking in the whole world
These recommendations are expected to benefit more than 750 million young people who want to quit all forms of tobacco, including cigarettes, waterpipes, smokeless tobacco products, cigars, roll-your-own tobacco and heated tobacco products.
What did the WHO Director General say?
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, this guideline will prove to be an important milestone in our global fight against these dangerous products. He said, most of the countries in the world are such where smoking addiction has taken a dangerous form among the youth. This is a mission that will help people quit tobacco. Actually, this is being done because due to bad lifestyle, smoking addiction among the youth, the burden of related diseases is increasing all over the world. Therefore, there is a need to take important steps in this area.
What are the challenges faced while quitting tobacco?
According to the data till now, there are 750 million people in the whole world who smoke and use tobacco. Out of this, 60 percent of the 1.25 billion tobacco users in the world want to quit smoking. But due to lack of resources and health challenges, proper services are not available to them. The result is that they fail to give up these bad habits. Rudiger Krech, Director of Health Promotion at WHO, emphasized that the struggles people face while trying to quit smoking should not be exaggerated.
Director Rudiger Krech said that we need to deeply appreciate the strength required to overcome this addiction and the suffering endured by individuals and their loved ones. These guidelines are meant to help those who want to overcome this difficulty.
Guidelines issued by WHO
WHO has prescribed a combination of pharmacotherapy and behavioural interventions to help quit smoking and cigarette addiction.
It has been said that the treatment for quitting smoking and the cost involved in it should be made available to people at a low cost so that the right service can reach the people of low and middle class as well.
Medicines like varenicline, nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), bupropion and cytisine will be used during treatment.
WHO has made arrangements to have health workers in health care settings so that whenever a patient comes, the health worker stays there for 30 seconds to three minutes to talk to them.
Apart from this, WHO said that efforts will be made to take this mission forward using digital things like text messaging, smartphone apps and internet programs.
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