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Efforts to curtail tobacco use among Qataris are achieving positive results, with close to 57% of male smokers having tried to quit the habit during the last 12 months, a survey has revealed.
“The percentage of men who tried to quit smoking was 56.9%, with higher proportion being among those aged 18-44 years (58.3%) than those aged 45-64 years (49.8%),” Supreme Council of Health’s Dr Alanoud al-Thani said yesterday while presenting the findings of the survey during a launch event.
A total of 2,496 Qatari adults took part in the National Stepwise Survey for Chronic Non-communicable Disease and Risk Factors.
The overall prevalence of smoking among them was 16.4% (including 31.9% male and 1.2% female). As many as 30.6% of men and 23.2% of women were smoking daily and the trend was higher among men aged 18-44 years than those aged 45-64 years. Among the respondents, 16% men and 7% women had quit smoking.
“This finding shows the need to further boost the ‘stop smoking’ infrastructure in the country in order to encourage more people to quit smoking, one of the risk factors for non-communicable diseases that are among the top five causes of deaths in Qatar,” noted Dr Alanoud, the manager of the Health Promotion and Non-Communicable Diseases section.
The official said that the Supreme Council of Health (SCH) was planning to implement a number of initiatives and programmes, aimed at reducing the prevalence of non-communicable diseases in the country.
“In 2011 in Qatar, non-communicable diseases were among the first five causes of mortality and four risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity and harmful use of alcohol were identified as leading to the diseases,” she said.
According to the World Health Organisation, of the 60mn deaths that occurred worldwide in 2010, around 9mn people below the age of 60 died prematurely due to preventable non-communicable diseases while some 26mn, above that age, fell victim to them. Injuries, communicable diseases, maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions accounted for the remaining number of deaths.
“Based on the results of the survey, we hope to develop a national dietary guideline and participate in developing the national food law as well as sponsor a comprehensive healthy lifestyle campaign, to target the main risk factors for NCDs such as tobacco use, unhealthy dietary habits and lack of physical inactivity,” she stressed.
According to Dr Alanoud, the SCH is participating in hypertension awareness activities in educational institutions aside from implementing the amended tobacco law and taking part in a partnership with the private sector to implement “Action on Diabetes”. The council is also participating in the working group to develop national physical activity guidelines.
Other findings of the survey included exposure to environmental tobacco (ET) smoke, with 22.2% of all respondents saying they were exposed to ET smoke at home while 18.5% reported exposure at work.
Dietary patterns show that the overall average number of combined fruit and/or vegetable servings was 2.2 servings per day, (0.8 serving fruit; 1.4 serving vegetable).
“The majority of respondents (91.1%) reported consuming less than five servings of fruit and/or vegetables on average per day while the vast majority (96.4%) of the respondents used vegetable oil for food preparation at the household level. “We find this very encouraging,” she pointed out.
The survey found an overall prevalence of low level of physical activity at 45.9%. The overall median time spent on physical activity daily was 37.1 minutes with longer time recorded daily among men (55.7 minutes) than women (23.6 minutes).
Men in the younger age group, 18-44 years, spend longer time (64.3 minutes) in total physical activity than those in the age group 45-66 years (30 minutes). The overall median time spent in sedentary activities was 1 hour 79 minutes daily
