World No Tobacco Day 2021: Why This Year's Theme Is Special Amid COVID-19

Today is World No Tobacco Day. The day gives tobacco users a fresh opportunity to determine and lead a heallthier life. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), "When the news came out that smokers were more likely to develop severe disease with COVID-19 compared to non-smokers, it triggered millions of smokers to want to quit tobacco...,". World No Tobacco Day focuses on spreading awareness about the dangers of using tobacco and how a number of health problems can be better tackled by doctors or averted when one quits smoking. The WHO says, ''Today can be Day 1'' in an effort to quit tobacco. 

World No Tobacco Day 2021 theme and campaign: Commit to Quit

This year the theme of World No Tobacco day is: Quit tobacco to be a winner. There are several campaign materials, which can be used widely to tell people the dangers of using tobacco. You can also post on Twitter and other social media platforms, pictures and ideas of what can be done in our neighbourhoods to help people quit tobacco using #CommitToQuit.

''Over 70 per cent of the 1.3 billion tobacco users worldwide lack access to the tools they need to quit successfully. This gap in access to cessation services is only further exacerbated in the last year as the health workforce has been mobilized to handle the pandemic, the WHO said.

World No Tobacco Day: How it started

In 1987, the Member States of the World Health Organization started the World No Tobacco Day. The aim was to ''draw global attention to the tobacco epidemic and the preventable death and disease it causes.'' The World Health Assembly passed a resolution marking April 7, 1988 to be a "a world no-smoking day." After the resolution was passed, World No Tobacco Day on 31 May every year became a big day for health and community workers to go all out and help people quit tobacco.

Commit To Quit today!