Thailand raises public awareness against tobacco-borne diseases

BANGKOK, November 21 (TNA) - The Thai government, through the Ministry of Public Health, is intensifying public campaigns on anti-smoking aimed to reduce the number of patients from tobacco-borne diseases, particularly Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), which kills up to three million people worldwide each year. On the occasion of the World COPD Day, designated by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), which falls on the third Wednesday of every November, or on November 20 this year, Thai Public Health Minister Dr. Pradit Sinthawanarong acknowledged that COPD alone is currently the fourth most fatal cause of human death after cancer, heart disease and stroke, as there are over 80 million COPD patients worldwide, about three million of whom die of the disease annually, and the number of COPD patients globally is expected to increase by 30 per cent by 2020. Common factors of COPD include smoking, second-hand smoking and even inhaling smoke from burning materials with dust and chemicals. In Thailand, the Bureau of Epidemiology, under the Ministry of Public Health’s Department of Disease Control, reported that there had been 99,433 people who received treatment for Emphysema and COPD from 2007-2011, 90 per cent of whom were caused by smoking and nearly 5,000 of whom were below 40 years old, while a survey by the National Statistical Office (NSO) in 2011 found that out of 53.9 million Thais who were 15 years old or above, 11.5 million of them smoked. There is also a growing concern over the hookah smoking among Thai teenagers who mistakenly believe that it is harmless or less dangerous than cigarette smoking, as it, in fact, contains high health-risk chemicals. According to the Thai health minister, his ministry's public campaigns are, therefore, focused on "3-reductions, 3-increases strategies, including the reduction of new smokers, the reduction of smokers in rural areas and the reduction of second-hand smoking at home and in public places, as well as increase in mechanisms to prevent the private tobacco industry from interfering with the government's tobacco control policy, increase in tobacco control personnel in the community and provincial levels and increase in innovations for tobacco control, all aimed at preventing and limiting COPD cases in Thailand. (TNA)