Tobacco smoke free homes project launched
Staff Report

ISLAMABAD—National Tobacco Control Cell in partnership with Association for Social Development Pakistan, National Health Services (NHS) Leeds, and Institute of Public Health on Wednesday launched a project for promoting `tobacco smoke free homes’ in the country.
The project was started with an aim to protect the households more specifically young children and pregnant women from harmful effects of secondhand smoke.
Under the project a comprehensive approach led by district health services and involving all key stakeholders will be developed.
The potential of involving health facility staff, community based health workers, school teachers, community leaders and Mosque Imams will be explored.
Based on this information operational guidelines will be developed for educating the communities and household to make their homes free of tobacco related smoke.
The project will be evaluated in about one and a half year and the lessons learned will be used to scale up the intervention in rest of the country. Since its inception the national program has joined hands with stakeholders and non-governmental partners to take up the challenging task of tobacco use reduction in the country.
The major areas of programme concern include tobacco use cessation, protection of communities from second-hand smoke, advocacy, communication and social mobilization), legislation and research capacity development.
Pakistan is among fifteen countries with high tobacco consumption in the world. Since early 90’s the cigarette consumption has continuously been increasing.