Chennai:
With the world set to observe 'No Tobacco Day' today, Population Services International (PSI), a non-profit making NGO, has joined hands with American Cancer Society to introduce telephone based counselling for people who wish to quit smoking.
While there were about 100 quitlines globally, the PSI India quitline programme is the first in the country, a press release issued by the NGO claimed. A quitline is a telephone based service that helps people quit tobacco.
The proactive counselling service in English and Tamil is done by qualified counsellors trained specifically in tobacco cessation, it said.
Facts show that about 35 per cent of Indians over the age of 15 use tobacco and over a million Indians die every year from tobacco related diseases, the release said.
Tuberculosis is a major cause of tobacco-related premature death in India with TB three times more prevalent among smokers. "In this context, the quitline is a key tool to help people quit smoking," it added.