Max Hospital doctors and Bhavan Vidyala School, Panchkula students take out a cycle rally in support of World No Tobacco Day today at Panchkula on Wednesday.
Panchkula, May 27, 2015: As many as 100 students of Bhavan Vidyala School, Panchkula took out a cycle rally to mark World No Tobacco Day today. The rally was organized in association with Max Super Speciality Hospital Mohali and Simply Health Plus, an NGO.
It was flagged off by the Oncology team of Max Super Speciality Hospital (MSSH), Mohali and Mrs Shashi Banerjee , Principal of Bhavan Vidyala. The students rallied through diipinfferent sectors of Panchkula carrying placards with slogans like ‘be a fighter’, ‘put down the lighter!’, ‘don’t let your future go up in smoke’ etc. En-route rally , students also shouted slogans highlighting the menace of smoking
After rally , Senior Oncologists from MSSH including Dr. Sachin Gupta, Dr Gautam Goel, Dr Ritesh Pruthi, Dr Sunandan Sharma, Dr Shweta Gupta, Dr Pankaj Kumar addressed the students on ills of smoking. The students took a pledge not to smoke ever.
Dr. Sachin Gupta, Sr Consultant, Medical and Hemato Oncology said that there were over 4000 chemicals in a single puff of cigarette smoke and 69 of them were known carcinogens. Nicotine was a very addictive psychoactive substance which caused a change in the person’s mood or behaviour. Tar was the same black substance that was used to make roads. Through cigarette smoke, tiny pieces of tar would condense and form a very dangerous sticky coating on the bronchial tubes.
Dr. Sunandan Sharma, Sr Consultant, Surgical Oncology said that as the young Indian generation would get more and more westernized, we have picked up negative ideologies of the advanced world. The pop and the pub culture have gripped the young generations. We have drifted away towards the fast and often harmful trends of life, for example alcoholism and smoking.
India was facing a smoking death crisis and it has been predicted by a research study that one million people would die every year from tobacco smoking in India in the next 10 years, stated Dr. Ritesh Pruthi, Sr consultant, Radiation Oncology.
Revealing the alarming facts, Dr. Pankaj Kumar, Sr consultant, Surgical Oncology said that The New England Journal of Medicine study found that smoking already accounted for 900,000 deaths a year in India.
Explaining what would happen when you smoke. Dr. Gautam Goel, Sr. Consultant, Medical Oncology informed that the nicotine would travels to the bloodstream and then to the brain. This would take only 8 seconds.