Bridging the Policy Practice Gap in Tobacco Cessation - Sudhanshu Patwardhan

Nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) is on WHO’s model list of essential medicines. 80% of the world’s tobacco users live in low- and middle-income countries. In most of these countries, NRT is either not available, affordable and/or accessible for tobacco dependence treatment. Even where NRT is available, healthcare professionals do not have the necessary training or confidence to treat tobacco dependence with NRT among their patients. Nicotine misperceptions are rife globally among healthcare professionals as well as among other stakeholders in society, e.g. media and policymakers. This presents a huge challenge as well as opportunity. To ensure adequate support and tools for helping current adult tobacco users to quit in a sustainable way, correcting nicotine misperceptions is key. That will require sharing accurate and scientific-evidence-based information on nicotine with a wide range of stakeholder groups in bespoke sessions, done professionally, by independent experts. Then only can we hope to reduce the harms from tobacco globally in the coming years.