China held various activities to improve public awareness against tobacco to echo this year's World No Tobacco Day theme "Health Professionals Against Tobacco" on May 31.

Many places across China have been mobilizing doctors and other medical professionals to stop smoking themselves and help others cure their addiction.

Zhejiang Provincial Health Department selected 56 medical workers and 58 hospitals as role models in curbing the tobacco- related death and diseases.

The health community plays a key role in fighting tobacco and health professionals are at the front-line to help people stop smoking, while they should quit smoking first themselves, said one role model Liu Liqun, deputy-director of Zhejiang Provincial Disease Prevention and Control Center.

Smoking in China's medical profession is worrisome, in some localities about 55 percent of medical professionals smoke, and about half of them lack the proper knowledge and awareness to persuade people from smoking, according to a survey by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in 2004.

China's economic hub Shanghai has labels 6,200 places as smoke- free areas, including schools, hospitals, supermarkets and tea houses. The city Monday launched a ten-day overhaul in about 300 smoke-free areas to promote strict no-smoking measures in these places.

Like toasting in banquet, presenting others with cigarettes in casual meeting or talking is maintained as a sort of act of good manners. Some smokers hold the belief that quitting smoking will destroy the body's balance since a smoker's body has adapted to the addiction, according to a survey carried out in Anyi County in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province this year.

Beijing Tuesday destroyed 65 million fake cigarettes, with the prices at the tags totaling 30 million yuan (3.61 million US dollars). The batch was part of the fake cigarettes captured in the past two years in Beijing, according to the Beijing municipal police department.

The Department of Health of Hong Kong launched a three-day activity in support of "World No Tobacco Day" on May 31 to raise public awareness of the hazards of smoking.

As part of the activity, the department will hold a series of anti-smoking exhibitions in Lung Cheung Mall at Wong Tai Sin District and pamphlets and souvenirs will be distributed to the public.

China is the world's largest tobacco producing and consuming country. The developing country reports about 320 million smokers, while the figure is expected to be 431 million in the coming 30 years, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Health. About 1 million Chinese die of tobacco-related diseases each year, and the figure is expected to double in 2025, according to the Ministry.

Tobacco-related diseases claim one life every ten seconds worldwide, and the annual death toll is expected to double to 10 million by 2020, with most of the victims in developing countries, according to the World Health Organization.

Source: Xinhua