Awareness about anti-smoking related laws and legislation in healthcare facilities of Delhi, India

• Main Authors: Tanu Anand, Nandini Sharma, Shekhar Grover
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: European Publishing 2018-03-01
• Series: Tobacco Induced Diseases
• Subjects: WCTOH
• Online Access: http://www.journalssystem.com/tid/Awareness-about-anti-smoking-related-laws-and-legislation-in-healthcare-facilities,83956,0,2.html

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.