Providing details to Khaleej Times, Dr Wedad Al Maidoor, who heads the National Tobacco Control Committee, said 10,549 smokers had enrolled with five smoking cessation clinics under MoH ever since they
were  set  up.

“So far, 3,370 of them have successfully quit smoking. This reveals that we are above the international standards in terms of success rate of smoking cessation clinics.”

The official said the statistics did not include details from the quit smoking clinic at Al Baraha Hospital in Dubai. “These are the numbers from our clinic in Al Ittihad Centre in Dubai and quit smoking clinics in Sharjah, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah.”

She said this year’s No Tobacco Campaign received unprecedented response from residents. “It has been a successful initiative by all standards. We set out to educate people about the hazards of tobacco products and to elicit a response. The campaign has received 10,000 pledges from smokers to give up the habit in view of the World No Tobacco Day on May 31.”

Dr Prem Jagyasi, MD and CEO of ExHealth, that conceived and organised the nationwide campaign, said the pledges were received through various channels. “We received them through our online registration programme, SMS campaign through some radio stations, exhibition stands at shopping malls, internal campaigns by corporate organisations and through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.” He said the organisers had sent out 300,000 emails promoting the campaign through Emirates Post’s marketing team. “We received 9,902 pledges before May 31. On the World No Tobacco Day, we received over 200 more pledges from individuals wanting to quit,” he told Khaleej Times.

sajila@khaleejtimes.com,

ismail@khaleejtimes.com