Nepals prime minister Mr. Madhav Kumar Nepal and Mr. Lokendra Shrestha, President of Nepal Cancer Relief Society NCRS gave September 16th 2010 to Sundar Thapa Sanuchhori Shakya Award for working againts one of the major causes for cancer, tobacco smoking.
Sundar Thapa is the project leader of the Health Education and Tobacco Intervention Program in Nepal. The pilot project was in 1999 and it began in 2001 and it will continue to 2012. It has reached 500.000 students in 441 school in 43 of 75 districts in Nepal.
In each of these schools there has been a two day health course. After the course 23.000 of 29.000 tobacco smoking students has promised not to use tobacco any more. So have done also 1850 teachers and 44.000 parents, who have heard about the dangers of tobacco smoking from their children.
According to the project statistics 16 % of the students in the 10th class use tobacco, boys more than girls, boys 23 %, girls 8 %. There are great differencies among the districts. In Pokhara, Palpa, Nawalparasi area the amount of students smoking are about 10 %, in the far western and western mountain and hill areas students were smoking much more, 25 -30 percent, in some areas of the boys even more than 40%.
The project has been financed by a Finnish health and temperance organization ETRA-liitto ry and the State of Finland. In Nepal the agency is Scheer Memorial Hospital of Seventh-day Adventists.
In the team which visits schools, there are about 10 traineers.
Health Education and Tobacco Intervention Program in Nepal (HETIP)
|
