“I was scared to face my friends in school if I stopped chewing tobacco along with them,” said Ramesh Jha (name changed), a student from West Bengal who had come to the Christian Medical College hospital here for treatment of oral cancer. Ramesh has been chewing tobacco for the past four years, after picking up the habit from his father. “It became worse because of my friends,” he admitted.
Over 300 such cases from across the country, mostly from north Indian states are being handled by the Tobacco Cessation Clinic attached to the Department of Dental and Oral Surgery (unit 1) at the CMC every year. Head of the department Dr Rabin Chakko, speaking to Express on the occasion of the World No-Tobacco Day said over 50 per cent of the patients came to CMC with advanced stages of cancer that required intensive care. He said, such patients have the choice of surgery or radiation therapy (that could provide up to 70 per cent cure), followed by counselling, to help them kick the habit. Short films on the ill effects of tobacco, how cancer develops and how to leave the habit are shown to the victims, who are also made to pledge that they would not take up the habit again.
The problem with oral cancer was that people do not feel the pain in the initial stages and go for treatment only when things get bad. While patients in the initial stages have about 95 per cent chances of being treated successfully and cured, for those in the second stage, chances drops to 50 per cent. For those in the third stage and the final stage, chances of being cured is 40 per cent and about 25 per cent, respectively.
Chakko said 60 per cent of all cancer cases were found to be due to habit-forming substances. Over 40 per cent of all the cancers were oral and 90 per cent of oral cancers were due to tobacco. 55 per cent of the north Indian population consumed tobacco in some form, he added.
Around 2,200 persons die annually in India due to tobacco-related diseases. School children face a higher risk of being exposed to tobacco addiction, he said.
The clinic handles smokers as they end up chewing tobacco products at some point or the other. “We advise and counsel them to make the right choice of quitting the habit and the patients often do not believe that it is possible for them to quit,” Chakko noted.
Social activist R Chandrasekaran while welcoming the ban imposed by the State on chewable tobacco products, wanted the ban to be extended to smoking also. He urged the State to establish counselling centres in all government health care institutions. Textbooks should highlight the dangers of tobacco and its impact on the public health care system, he said.