Tobacco Cessation in India: How Can Oral Health Professionals Contribute?

Abstract

Tobacco use is described as the single most preventable cause of morbidity and mortality globally, with the World Bank predicting over 450 million tobacco-related deaths in the next fifty years. In India, the proportion of all deaths that can be attributed to tobacco use is expected to rise from 1.4% in 1990 to 13.3% in 2020 of which smoking alone will cause about 930,000 adult deaths by 2010. Many studies have shown that counseling from a health professional is an effective method of helping patients quit the tobacco habit. Tobacco cessation needs to be urgently expanded by training health professionals in providing routine clinical interventions, increasing availability and subsidies of pharmacotherapy, developing wide-reaching strategies such as quitlines, and costeffective strategies, including group interventions. The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) emphasizes the vital contribution of participation of health professional bodies, as well as training and healthcare institutions in tobacco control efforts. Dentists can play an important role in helping patients quit using tobacco. One of the key strategies to reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality is to encourage the involvement of health professionals in tobacco-use prevention and cessation counselling. The dental office is an ideal setting for tobacco cessation services since preventive treatment services, oral screening, and patient education have always been a large part of the dental practice.

Effectiveness of Tobacco Education for Pharmacy Students in Indonesia

“…These findings are notable because such program was entirely new in Indonesia. As one of the key strategies to reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality especially cancer-related morbidity and mortality is to encourage the involvement of the health professional (World Health Organization, 2014, Oberoi SS et al, 2014, integration of tobacco cessation in the pharmacy school curricular should be encouraged. We envision that the TE will lead to a shared, model tobacco cessation curriculum that can be disseminated nationally to pharmacy students and pharmacists in Indonesia.…”

Effectiveness of a Brief Physician Counselling Session on Improving Smoking Behaviour in the Workplace

“…The added advantage of brief smoking cessation counselling is that it is equally effective when delivered by other trained professionals such as pharmacists (Sinclair et al, 2004), dentists (Oberoi et al, 2014), medical social workers (Pimple et al, 2012) and medical students (Kadowaki et al, 2004). This provides an opportunity to involve a large readily available human resource in providing smoking cessation counseling.…”

Integration of Tobacco Control in Masters of Public Health Curricula of India

“…Stillman et al (2006) in their study had also cited that significant proportion of public health students in the U.S. received only a modest introduction to tobacco, while only a very small fraction receive substantial, in-depth training in tobacco control strategies (Stillman et al, 2005;Stillman et al, 2006). Oberoi et al (2014) has recommended that there should be certified courses on tobacco cessation and these courses of short-term duration can be developed to provide basic knowledge of tobacco cessation including the pharmacotherapy (Oberoi et al, 2014). The effectiveness of tobacco use cessation (TUC) counseling in dental office has also been demonstrated in a study by Halawany et al (2013) in which more smokers agreed to counselling as compared to non-smokers (Halawany et al, 2013).…”