MoU signed to take tobacco control to grassroots, develop tobacco-free villages across Assam

 GUWAHATI: The State Tobacco Control Cell, the Assam State Rural Livelihoods Mission (ASRLM), and the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (the Union) have signed a non-financial MOU on tobacco-free villages. The MoU has been signed to take the tobacco control initiatives to the grassroot level through the existing mechanisms of the Assam State Rural Livelihoods Mission (ASRLMS). The MoU on a tobacco-free village will directly benefit rural women from across Assam, as ASRLMS has a ground-breaking presence in almost all villages in the state.

Krishna Baruah, Mission Director, NRLM; Dr. Herombo Kumar Bhattacharjee, State Nodal Officer, State Tobacco Control Cell, Assam; Nobosree Gogoi, Deputy Director, Directorate of Health Services, Government of Assam; Satyajit Das, State Project Manager, The UNION; and Anindita Deka, State Programme Manager, ASRLMS, were present on the occasion.

The following activities may be taken up with the larger objective of developing tobacco-free villages’ across the length and breadth of the state: Checking the income leakages of the beneficiaries so that they do not spend a sizable chunk of their income on buying tobacco products and also safeguarding their health from resultant NCDs (non-communicable diseases). Mass outreach activities can be organised to reach out to a sizable section of the population through village-level, block-level, cluster-level meetings, etcetera. A strategy can be worked out to address the tobacco menace together by using common IEC material, sharing the same platform for disseminating messages, etcetera. To aggressively work on the concept of a “tobacco-free village” by channelling the synergy achieved through inter-departmental collaboration, stated a press release.

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