| Summary: | Background
Healthcare facilities are vital to effective implementation
of a anti-smoking law. Healthcare institutions play an integral role in
educating and modeling health behaviors of our communities. It is therefore
important to assess their opinion and ensure compliance. Therefore, the present
study was undertaken to assess the awareness amongst people in healthcare
institutions regarding the initiative years after intensive implementation.
Methods
It
was a cross-sectional study conducted in the participants selected by multi-stage sampling from
the health institutions in 6 districts of Delhi using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. A
total of 594 people were interviewed.
Results
Out of the total, 35.2% (n=204) reported to be current smokers. Only 31.5% (n=182) of the participants were aware about the name of COTPA. Awareness about organization implementing the COTPA was also very low (n=46; 4.5%) among the respondents. Even though they had less awareness about COTPA by name (as stated above), they were aware about some of the provisions of the act. Majority of the participants (n=512; 86.7%) perceived that smoke free zones are the places where smoking forms of tobacco are banned. Regarding the awareness about the places designated as “smoke free zones”, 86.7% (n=515) of the respondents named healthcare institutions. About 74% of the people interviewed reported to have seen people smoking at public places on the day of interview while only 24.1% reported to have seen any one getting punished/fined for smoking at public places.
Conclusions
The awareness
about anti-smoking law and smoke free initiative was low among the study group.
Further, action against the violators of the law was not being . Thus, there is a need for stricter implementation of
the law and increased spreading of awareness among the people in healthcare institutions
about the anti-smoking legislation.
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