Tobacco induced cancer on the rise

Feb 4, 2016, 
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), not so surprisingly, indicates that 50% of all cancers among men is caused to due to smoking or chewing tobacco.
Between 2011 and 2014, the twin states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana recorded a whopping 3,05,172 new cases of cancer, reveal records available with the Union health ministry. According to medical experts, oral and lung cancer, especially among men, top this chart, courtesy the uncontrolled abuse of tobacco among this section of society.

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), not so surprisingly, indicates that 50% of all cancers among men is caused to due to smoking or chewing tobacco. While breast and cervical cancer among women continue to beat the other forms of the deadly disease, ICMR records caution that at least 25% of cancers among this group nowadays is the the result of tobacco consumption that leads to oral and lung cancer.

Also ringing the alarm bell is the voluminous 61-page operational guidelines of the National Tobacco Control Programme, issued by the Union Health Ministry's National Tobacco Control cell in 2012. According to it, 80% of all oral cancers are caused because of that one vice -tobacco abuse.

"We would be surprised if any smoker between 55 and 74 years of age with a history of 15 years of sustained smoking does not develop signs of lung cancer when made to undergo a low dose CT chest scan," said Dr Sai Praveen Haranath, Senior consultant Pulmonologist and Intensivist, Apollo Hospitals, Hyderabad, confessing to the phenomenal rise in tobacco-induced lung cancer cases.

But these startling revelations notwithstanding, the authorities aren't perturbed. At least so it seems from the abysmally poor implementation of the National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP) -both at the state and district levels in AP and Telangana. This utter failure on the part of officials, medical experts admit, is the reason for the spiralling of cancer cases caused by tobacco abuse.

The NTCP was launched across all states in 2007 with a two-pronged agenda: to bring greater awareness about harmful effects of tobacco use and to implement tobacco control laws, that is the Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA), which regulates smoking in public places, prohibits sale of cigarettes to minors and bans the sale of tobacco products within a 100 yard radius of educational institutions, among others.
None of this, Health experts say, has been achieved. Even the formation of committees (to monitor the implementation of the programme) at the state and district levels hasn't taken off. Reason: The pressure exerted on the Government of India by the strong tobacco lobby, say Industry insiders.

"That governments are under tremendous pressure from the tobacco lobby to not implement the NTCP is abundantly evident from the delay caused in implementing the decision to increase the size of pictorial warning on packets of tobacco products from the existing 40% to 85%," said Dr K Sreekanth, Surgical Oncologist, Yashoda Hospital .

Among other instructions, the NTCP guidelines also mandates the constitution of a state-level coordination committee tasked with the job of providing alternative livelihood to beedi rollers. This rule too continues to remain only on paper. Indian Times