‘Sponge’ to demonstrate how cigarette smoke causes premature death

Islamabad

A national mass media campaign that seeks to demonstrate the deadly effects of tobacco use and encourage smokers to quit was launched Tuesday by Dr. Assad Hafeez, Director General of the Ministry of Health. The campaign features a public service announcement (PSA) featuring ‘Sponge,’ which graphically depicts how cigarettes smoke causes preventable disease and premature death.

The campaign, which will air on all major television channels and appear on billboards and community posters in Pakistan until late December, has been made possible through technical and financial support provided by Vital Strategies.

The 30-second ‘Sponge’ PSA compares a smoker’s lungs with a sponge. ‘Sponge’ is one of the world’s most successful tobacco control campaigns, having already been aired in more than 25 countries. It shows how a smoker’s lungs soak up the poisons found in tobacco smoke, which collect in the lungs as cancer-causing tar. The amount of tar generated by a pack a day smoked every year is enough to fill a beaker. The PSA lists the diseases associated with tobacco use and urges smokers to “Quit Today!” 

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Assad said: “We need to reduce tobacco use in Pakistan to reduce the health and economic burden it causes. Tobacco-related illness reduces productivity, causes massive healthcare costs, and robs families of breadwinners, leaving some of our children without a secure future. Our message is very clear. Tobacco kills, and in many cases it does not kill quickly, but causes lingering and debilitating conditions such as heart disease, strokes, cancer and chronic lung conditions including Tuberculosis. Smokers and other tobacco users should seriously reconsider their choice. For the good of their physical and financial health, for Pakistan’s people and her economy, we encourage tobacco users to Quit today!”

Dr. Assad thanked Vital Strategies for supporting the second national tobacco control campaign being implemented in Pakistan. “We would like to thank them for sharing their global expertise and assisting us in this important work of reducing tobacco use and saving lives,” he remarked.

The director of the Tobacco Control Cell (TCC) said, “WHO’s MPOWER framework emphasises a range of policy measures and initiatives for successful tobacco control programmes. One of the key components of MPOWER comes from the letter “W” to “Warn about the dangers of tobacco”, and this is why we are here today; to continue to warn the public about tobacco harms. TCC fully endorses the need for ongoing national communication campaigns to tell people the truth about tobacco.”

Dr. Tahir Turk, senior technical advisor at Vital Strategies, congratulated Pakistan for broadcasting Sponge as part of its tobacco control strategy. By showing the specific harms of tobacco use in a simple but powerful way, campaigns like Sponge help to encourage smoking cessation and deter youth from initiating tobacco use. “These campaigns also assist in countering misinformation from multinational tobacco companies, whose only interest is to make profits from products that kill one in every two smokers before their time. More needs to be done to reject tobacco industry interference in government policy designed to protect the health of Pakistan’s people,” Dr. Tahir maintained.

Given the crucial role these campaigns play in saving lives and reducing the healthcare costs of tobacco-related disease, Dr. Tahir called on Pakistan’s television channels and radio stations to comply with their obligation, as reiterated in the Supreme Court and by the chairman of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) in June, to allocate 10 per cent of airtime to broadcasting public service messages including Sponge. “We wholeheartedly support such a sustainable strategy for funding health communication campaigns. With concerted government action, Pakistan can and will combat the growing tobacco epidemic and make progress towards its objectives under the Global Goals,” Dr. Tahir predicted. 

The Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) Pakistan 2014 found that 31.8 per cent of adult men and 5.8 per cent of women use tobacco in any form; 22.2 per cent of men and 2.1 per cent of women currently smoke tobacco. While nearly 88 per cent of smokers believe that smoking causes serious illness, only a quarter (24.7 per cent) had tried to quit in the past year and only 22.3 per cent planned to or were thinking about quitting. According to The Tobacco Atlas, tobacco use is the cause of 12.2 per cent of deaths among men and 4.5 percent of deaths among women, killing over 2,000 Pakistanis every week.

GATS confirmed that smokers in Pakistan are aware that smoking causes harm, but too few are currently translating this knowledge into an intention to quit. High tobacco taxes, smoking bans and hard-hitting tobacco control communication campaigns help to prompt quit attempts. An evaluation of Pakistan’s first national tobacco control communication campaign, broadcast in 2015, found that more than half (53 per cent) of smokers who recalled seeing the campaign reported making a quit attempt during the initial campaign period. An additional 15 per cent who were aware of the campaign also made a quit attempt after the initial period.

Meanwhile, the enforcement team of the District Administration and Tobacco Smoke Free Islamabad, led by Capt. Waqas, raided various tobacco selling shops in sectors H-8 and I-8 and confiscated smuggled and illegal cigarettes worth over a million rupees including sheesha concentrates and E-cigarettes. Eight people were arrested. The initiative was part of implementation of tobacco control laws in Islamabad, being carried out by the District Management.