Counselling TB patients about the harmful impact of consuming tobacco can go a long way in helping them quit the cancerous product and subsequently cut down the risk from the deadly infectious disease, says an Indian study published in the recent WHO South East Asia Journal of Public Health.
Conducted in Vadodara in Gujarat, the study says that more than half of the total patients who were counseled quit habit of smoking as well as smokeless products. The result holds importance given that 38 per cent of TB deaths in India are attributed to smoking. Also, currently a significant number of TB patients use tobacco which is having an adverse impact on the success of the TB control programme in the country. India has the highest TB burden accounting for one fifth of the global incidence.
Researchers Dr Jagdish Kaur, Kuldeep Sachdeva and Dinesh Jain from Health Ministry’s National Centre for Disease Control, Bhavesh Modi from Gujarat Tobacco Control Cell had counseled a total of 2,879 TB patients, all of them tobacco users and registered under the TB Control programme.