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A brief on World No Tobacco
day Awardees for the year 2006
Dr Rohini Premkumari,
Professor of Radiation Oncology, Cancer Institute (WIA), India
Dr. Rohini Premkumari is one of the pioneers in the area of tobacco
control in the country. She not only established the first Tobacco Cessation
Centre at Chennai but has been involved in continuous, well organized, highly
motivated and effective anti tobacco efforts comprising of not only tobacco
cessation, but also advocacy with key stakeholders and awareness generation
among the masses. Her leadership has resulted in numerous awareness programmes, which have reached lakhs
of people, especially adolescents and young adults. Strong tobacco control
networks have been formed through sensitization of rural NGO’s
and organizations such as the NSS and NCC. Training programmes
and hands-on trainings have been organized and as a result, 10 tobacco
cessation sub centres have been set up all over the
state of TamilNadu. All these efforts have been
directed to raise awareness about the fact that tobacco is deadly in all
forms irrespective of whether is smoked, chewed or sniffed and to provide
help to current tobacco users for quitting this deadly addiction.
Dr Rohini
has been instrumental in sensitizing many celebrity film stars like Mr. Kamalhasan, on the need for tobacco control and many of
them have taken up the anti-tobacco issue seriously in their respective
fields. Mr. Kamalhasan volunteered and even did an
anti-tobacco clipping for mass viewer ship. The anti tobacco messages have
also been raised and aired on popular television channels and millions of
listeners have also benefited from anti-tobacco programmes
on All India Radio, and other FM radio channels under her leadership. Slides
have been shown in theatres and public places. In the process, the public has
been well informed as to the incursions of the tobacco menace into their
personal lives. She has been advocating for better implementation of tobacco
control laws with the local administration and has been giving technical
inputs to them from time to time. Dr Rohini has participated in several
national and international meetings on tobacco control and is an inspiration
for other medical professionals to join hands in the efforts to wipe out the
tobacco epidemic.
Dr Dhirendra N. Sinha, Associate Professor. Department of Surgery, SK
Medical College, Muzaffarpur, India
Dr Dhirendra N Sinha has collected
information on various deadly forms of tobacco used in South East Asia
Region. He has provided WHO documents on SEA regional situation analysis on
use of smokeless tobacco use and bidi and its
implications.
On the basis
of his pioneering work in the field of smokeless tobacco he was on a panel of
world experts in IARC Monograph committee on Smokeless tobacco and
nitrosamines in the year 2004.
He has been
instrumental in providing information regarding most commonly used dentifrice
in India (Lal Dant Manjan ) containing tobacco to the policy makers in India
.
This issue
created attention of global scientists and it was published in British
Medical Journal and media attention too with a success story when dental care
products manufacturers agreed that the samples were older one and they are
going to destroy it and all newer samples will not have tobacco.
Apart from
this he has been always very active in all sorts of advocacy for all deadly
forms of tobacco whether at national or international level. He has been
contributor in India Tobacco control report as well as in Bidi
Monograph published under the joint venture of WHO,
MOH India and CDC.
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