A Study on Awareness of Tobacco use Risk among High School Children, Hyderabad

Introduction: Smoking causes 90% of lung cancers and other lung diseases, there is one tobacco related death every eight seconds. Passive smoking causes health problems for children and other family members. Smokers/tobacco consumers are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop heart diseases and paralysis than non smokers. Smoking increases risk of diabetes. About half of teenagers who use tobacco will eventually be killed by it. Objective: To Estimate the Awareness on Use of Tobacco among High School Children. Material and methods: Cross sectionalstudy. Two randomly selected schools from the list obtained from DEO. Study Population: High school children Sample size: 197 school children. Statistical Analysis: Microsoft Excel 2007 and Epi-info 3.5.3. Results: Knowledge on Ill effects of Tobacco use were lung cancer -35%, Oral cancer -30% Oral diseases – 25% and others – 10%. Knowledge on Passive smoking was only 26%, and out of which 21% knew about Ill effects due to Passive smoking. Influence for the behaviour being more by Peer Group & Friends 50%, followed by Parents.