“Vietnam without cigarette smoke” campaign launched

“Vietnam without cigarette smoke” campaign launched With an aim to reduce smoking in Vietnam and spread awareness of the harmful effects of smoking, the Health Ministry and the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union Central Committee have jointly launched the media campaign “Vietnam without cigarette smoke.”

>> Vietnam loses over $1 bln to smoking per year >> Smoking kills 100 people in Vietnam every day

The campaign, which was launched on February 22 in Hanoi, will place images warning of the harmful effects of smoking on cigarette packs as well as broadcast such warnings through mass media.

It will also sponsor a contest for video clips, paintings, or posters with the theme “Life without cigarette smoke” to be posted on social networks to encourage young people to take part in anti-smoking activities.

The anti-smoking message of the campaign will be depicted via two television video clips themed “smoking causes damage to your body” and “smoking is causing damage to your children.”

These clips describe the serious damage caused by smoking and second-hand smoke to children and adults.

The clips will be aired on the national TV channel as well as a number of local TV channels.

Regarding the contest “Life without cigarette smoke,” candidates can submit their work by posting videos, paintings, or posters on http://on.fb.me/1cGFr2K from February 22 to May 31, 2014.

There will be three first prizes, three second prizes, and three third prizes.

According to the campaign’s organizers, many people smoke as they are not aware of the harmful effects of smoking.

Many studies say that mass media campaigns are one of the best methods to encourage people not to smoke or to quit smoking, the organizers said.

15 million adults smoke; 100 die per day

According to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) in 2010, 47.4 percent of men and 1.4 percent of women (aged 15 years and up) in Vietnam are smokers. This means that more than 15 million adults are smokers.

In addition, 73.1 percent of adults in Vietnam are exposed to secondhand smoke at home, and 55.9 percent of adults are exposed to secondhand smoke at work.

Smoking is the leading cause of death in the world and is responsible for the deaths of nearly six million people throughout the world every year.

In Vietnam, about 40,000 people die of smoking-related causes each year, according to GATS.

Vietnam is one of 15 countries with the highest number of smokers in the world, and every year the country loses about VND22 trillion (US$1.04 billion) to cigarettes, according to information presented at a workshop held in Hanoi on December 12, 2013.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), for every two men over 15 in Vietnam, there is one smoker, Dr Phan Thi Hai, deputy chief of the Health Ministry’s Program for Prevention and Control of Tobacco Harms, said.

Smoking is one the leading causes of death in Vietnam, with more than 100 people dying from tobacco-related causes per day. This is four times higher than the death toll of traffic accidents, according to WHO estimates.

In the world, smoking kills almost six million people a year, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, WHO said.

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