Doctors help make Kerala homes smoke free

NAGPUR: Homes in several Kerala villages are now free from cigarette smoke as the women here have taken it upon themselves to get rid of secondhand smoking. The health department of Kerala has also lent support to the initiative, taking it up at state level.

This became possible because of a project called Quit Tobacco India being run in five medical colleges in Kerala and Karnataka. It is being run at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences of Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore Medical College, Mangalore's Kasturba Medical College, Amrita Medical College, Kannur's Academy of Medical Sciences and Alappuzha Medical College.

"It began with the thought of integrating hazards of tobacco in medical education and so 15 modules on the topic were introduced in different departments like medicine, psychiatry and cancer in these colleges. The modules include training the students in clinical and bedside therapies through videos," said Dr KR Thankappan, professor and head of theAchutha Menon Centre for Health Sciences at Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute of Medical Sciences and Technology that is run by the department of science and technology of the government of India. This, he said, resulted in reduction of tobacco consumption among the medical community in the state.

After this, the doctors thought of broadening the scope of the project. They contacted some self help groups of Kerala and spread the word against the habit of smoking and initiated the smoke-free homes project. "The women understood that passive smoking could be more dangerous than smoking. So, they asked their husbands and even guests to go outside the house if they had to smoke. Seeing the effectiveness of the programme, the state government made it a pan-Kerala project," he said.

"We told people facts like of an estimated 2.75 million tobacco users in India, half are expected to die of complications caused by the habit. We also told them how tobacco had been linked directly to several illnesses like cancer and cardiovascular diseases," said Dr Thankappan.