In continuation of its efforts to combat smoking and to coincide with the World No Tobacco Day held on May 31st of every year, the Ministry of Health (MOH) has launched today (Wednesday) an anti-smoking campaign under the theme (Help Us … We Will Help You). This year world day is held under the theme "Tobacco and Heart Disease". MOH aims to develop the therapeutic services to help smokers who wish to quit, to open a number of anti-smoking clinics across the Kingdom, to issue the Saudi Clinical Guidelines for Tobacco Cessation Services as a guide for service providers, to hold many theoretical and practical courses for workers in the field and to provide anti-smoking drugs for citizens free of charge.
According to MOH, the target groups include smokers and their families, workers in the health sector including physicians, health educators and social specialists, anti-smoking societies and organizations and all community members. In this vein, MOH has developed a host of awareness materials and films which will be published via mass media and social media sites.
It added that the World No Tobacco Day 2018 aims to highlight the links between the use of tobacco products and heart and other cardiovascular diseases, to increase awareness within the broader public of the impact tobacco use and exposure to second-hand smoke have on cardiovascular health, to provide opportunities for the public, governments, and others to make commitments to promote heart health by protecting people from use of tobacco products and to encourage countries to strengthen implementation of the tobacco control measures.
It is noted that smoking is one of the main causes of death, it kills 6 million persons annually and is expected to increase to over 8 million annually by 2030, and in addition to that, it is one of the risk factors of many diseases.
It is worth mentioning that MOH has recently launched a mobile app for monitoring and reporting violators of anti-smoking regulations. Through the app, anyone can report any violation of the regulations in public places and selling tobacco to those under 18 years of age. Fines amounting to SR 5,000 will be imposed on commercial firms violating the regulations. In addition, the app can be used to report any clip displaying cigarette or shisha smoking on any local television channel. Likewise, MOH has activated its 262 anti-smoking clinics with the aim of providing therapeutic and awareness services for the target smokers and non-smokers, highlighting anti-smoking regulations, providing counseling and health education, as well as reducing the percent of smoking and passive smoking. It is noteworthy that the anti-smoking campaign launched by MOH at the beginning of last Ramadan increased the number of visitors to anti-smoking clinics by 321%.