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Ramadan offers perfect time to quit smoking

DUBAI — With Ramadan approaching, it is the perfect time and opportunity for people to quit all forms of tobacco, including smoking and especially shisha, said Ministry of Health's Sharjahs officials at a stop-smoking roadshow held at the Deira City Centre yesterday.

"It has become such a popular tradition in this part of the world to smoke shisha with friends during the holy month of Ramadan right through to the very early hours of the morning,” Leena Alaa Adeen, a representative of MoH.

The roadshow was organised by the Ministry of Health, Sharjah, in conjunction with Nicotinell to spread awareness just a few days before Ramadan. The roadshow has been organised to coincide with the AGCC quit smoking week where health ministries of the AGCC countries attempt to send out a message to smokers before Ramadan. The first phases of the roadshow saw ministry educators and advisors from Nicotinell visiting universities in the UAE offering advice on the best methods of quitting permanently.

Dr Ibrahim Jaber, from the Ministry of Health’s Quit Smoking Clinic in Sharjah, also present on the occasion, offered advice to chronic smokers and provided tips on how to quit successfully. Rany Victor, spokesperson of Nicotinell offered advice and also conducted the smokerlyser tests. What interested visitors most was a computer software programme in which participants input certain data, including how many cigarettes they smoke a day and how long they have been smoking after which the software calculated how many cigarettes they could have smoked since starting. “The software has calculated the number of days, months, or years that I have lost from my life expectancy and other shocking information,” said Mohammed Zakria, a chronic smoker who had visited the Nicotinell stand.