Challenges faced by tobacco quitline services during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Background

COVID-19 started in 2019 and spread rapidly throughout the world. The pandemic has presented a lot of public health challenges globally. The virus mostly affected the respiratory system, so tobacco consumers (smoke/smokeless) were at a higher risk of developing severe illnesses due to COVID-19. National Tobacco Quit Line Services (NTQLS) plays an important role in tobacco cessation. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was challenging to run these services.

Methods

There were several challenges faced by the NTQLS during the lockdown. The data from the NTQLS team was retrieved to analyze if the work from home and the pandemic had affected the number of attended calls and quitters during the pandemic (2020) and compared it with before the pandemic (2019).

Results

The results showed that before the pandemic, the attended calls were 36.4% whereas, during the pandemic, they were 27%. Quit-date set decreased during the pandemic (29.2%) compared to before the pandemic (41.8%). Furthermore, the number of quitters decreased during the pandemic (27.5%) compared to before the pandemic (35.9%).

Conclusion

Telephone counseling is effective in various countries to increase the quit attempts among the individuals during the pandemic, however, these services were jeopardized due to COVID-19 pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• India
• COVID-19
• tobacco
• public health
• telephone counseling

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by the Tobacco control division and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India to run the Tobacco Quitline services effectively at Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

Raw data was generated at National Tobacco Quitline Services at Tata Memorial Center, Navi Mumbai. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, [Budukh AM], upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.