Tobacco Prevalence and Usage Pattern in the Urban Slum of Visakhapatnam.

Abstract

Tobacco use is one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced and leads not only to human
loss, but also heavy social and economic costs. Hence study was initiated with objectives to determine
prevalence of tobacco usage and patterns among urban slum population and to study socio-demographic
characteristics among study population. It was an observational, descriptive cross-sectional study conducted
in the urban field practice area of GITAM Institute of Medical Sciences & Research, Visakhapatnam for a
period of 3 months. The study population included were adults aged above 18 years who were residing in
that area since 1 year and willing to participate in the study. The sample size was 350. A simple random
sampling procedure was followed. Present questionnaire adopted from GATS survey Questionnaire. Data
entered in MS excel sheet. Analysis done by using SPSS soft ware. Out of 350 study population 216 (61.7%)
were males and 134 (38.3%) were females. In this study prevalence of current users of smoking daily was
34.9% and less than daily users was 7.1%. The most common type of smoking product used was cigarettes
(30.9%). There was 15.1% of former smoking of users was observed. The prevalence of current daily users
of smokeless form of tobacco was found to be 13.7% and product used for smokeless form was chewing
tobacco (8.8%). There was 12.5% of study population exposed to second hand smoke. Most common reason
for initiation of tobacco use was fun (16%). Prevention of tobacco use in people appears to be the single
opportunity for preventing non-communicable disease in the world today. India needs to adopt a more
holistic and coercive approach to fight the problem of tobacco by adopting media awareness, behavior
change communication interventional activities and establishing tobacco de-addiction and counselling
centres for slum dwellers.