First National Roundtable Consultation on Best Practices of Tobacco Control in India Kick-starts at PGIMER Chandigarh

By Samachar Digital News

Chandigarh 20^th Jan-2020:- A 2 Day National Roundtable Consultation on Best Practices of Tobacco Control organized by Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER in collaboration with The International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, New Delhi kick started at Hotel Shivalik View, sector 17, Chandigarh. Professor Sonu Goel, chief organizer of the event welcomed the experts from 10 organisations working on tobacco control in India to first such consultation in the country and apprised about the aim of consultation to highlight best practices of tobacco control over last 15 years. Dr L. Swasticharan, Chief Medical Officer, Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) was the chief guest of the event who emphasized upon the importance of such consultations for sharing best practices along with integration of tobacco control with health and non- health programmes of India. He told the best practices and innovations in various domains of tobacco control go unnoticed due to lack of their formal documentation and appreciated PGIMER, Chandigarh to take this initiative of development of a compendium of best practices in tobacco control in India for wider dissemination and learning. During the workshop, 6^th issue of Tobacco Free Times, a bimonthly newsletter of e- Resource Centre for Tobacco Control, under Department of Community Medicine and School of Public Health, PGIMER Chandigarh was also released at the consultation by the experts.

The inaugural presentation was done by Dr Rana J Singh, Deputy Regional Director, South East Asia, the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease who deliberated upon best practices undertaken in National Tobacco Control Programme (NTCP) implementation in India. Thereafter, Ranjit Singh, Legal Consultant, deliberated on effective utilization of Cigarettes & other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA) and allied legislations for combating tobacco menace in India. Further, Ms Radhika Srivastava, Director- Health Promotion, HRIDAY, New Delhi introduced best practices in youth interventions for managing tobacco control in India. Later, Pranay Lal, Senior Technical Advisor, from International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease deliberated introduced best practices in tackling tobacco industry interference (TII) in India. This is the first national consultation which aims at developing a compendium of best practices in tobacco control in India, which will be helpful to national, and state level policy makers and implementers in learning and implementing the same in their settings.