"There are three goals outlined in this campaign: calling non-smokers not to try smoking, smokers to quit smoking, and reducing the number of passive smokers," Health Minister Nafsiah Mboi stated at the launch event in Blitz Megaplex Pacific Place, Central Jakarta.
The video campaign, launched on Friday, contains the testimony of a throat cancer sufferer who was an active smoker. The campaign will be aired for two weeks on seven national television channels and also at the cinemas.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), smoking kills nearly 6 million people each year. More than five million of those deaths are the direct result of smoking while more than 600 thousand are the result of passive smoking or being exposed to smoke (second-hand smoker). Unless urgent action is taken, the annual death toll could rise to more than eight million by 2030.
In the meantime, according to a research published in March 2014, Indonesian smokers consumed at least 302 billion cigarettes in 2013, thereby placing Indonesia on the top of the Southeast Asian smokers list.
The research results of the Demographic Institute of the University of Indonesias Faculty of Economics indicated that 46.16 percent of the nations population consumed cigarettes.
In 2012, the active smokers from both sexes in Indonesia increased by 35 percent, or about 61.4 million in 2013, according to the research data.
It was revealed that the deaths caused by smoking-related diseases in 2010 reached 190,260, or about 12.7 percent of all the recorded deaths in the same year. (*)
Editor: Heru Purwanto
Copyright © ANTARA 2014
