MOSCOW, May 29 — Hundreds of thousands of smokers are wanting to quit during the global pandemic of the Covid-19 lung disease, said Ruediger Krech, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) director of Health Promotion, reported Sputnik News Agency.
“We see hundreds of thousands of smokers wanting to quit during this crisis. There’s a huge uptake of tobacco cessation programs and the demand to us to support people in quitting smoking,” Krech told a virtual briefing on the occasion of the World No Tobacco Day celebrated on Sunday.
When asked whether the organisation had any specific data on people who have quit smoking or plan to do it during the pandemic, Vinayak Prasad, a coordinator of WHO’s No Tobacco Unit, said that there was a growing demand for tobacco cessation programs in a number of countries, including Mexico, Jordan, India and China.
“We are now looking for new solutions, technology solutions to make available to help those who want to quit,” the official added.
Earlier this month, the joint analysis of survey data by YouGov and the campaign group Action on Smoking and Health showed that over 300,000 people in the United Kingdom might have quit smoking during the coronavirus crisis due to health concerns, while further 550,000 smokers have tried to quit, and 2.4 million have cut down.
— Bernama
