Stop and Gain: DOH launches quit smoking contest

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health has announced a contest for smokers and vape users in a bid to encourage smoking cessation.

“We are heartened by this collaborative effort among the Lung Center of the Philippines and Action on Smoking and Health Philippines (ASH) in facing these issues head-on with the common goal of protecting our kababayans,” Health Secretary Ted Herbosa said.

The “Stop and Gain: A Quit and Win Tobacco Cessation Contest” officially opened yesterday and will run until Oct. 31. 

“We encourage the public and private health advocates and health champions to strictly enforce the provisions of the Vape Law, and implement our smoke-free and vape-free playbooks, such that we are enabled to live a healthier and fresher environment,” Herbosa added.

Former smokers who stopped smoking in July 2022 or have never smoked in the past six months can join the contest.

“We chose July 2022 as the starting point because that was the time when smoking cessation services were also made available in the country,” ASH executive director Dr. Maricar Limpin said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Winners will be determined through a raffle draw on Nov. 22 and there will be three winners: one each from Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao. They will receive P5,000 each. A consolation prize of P1,000 will also be given per participating area.

Local government units that enrolled at least 100 smokers in the cessation program and barangay health workers and cessation staff assigned to assist contestants will receive citations and commendations, according to Limpin.

A contestant will win the contest if they can declare in good faith that they stopped smoking for at least six months or longer and are committed to continuously stop smoking throughout the contest period, she noted.

“We can easily verify this because those enrolled in the cessation program are being strictly monitored by the designated cessation staff,” Limpin said.

Meanwhile, vaping could be more harmful than smoking cigarettes, according to a pulmonologist.

“(Patients) have only been vaping for a year and are already having difficulty in breathing. It would really take some time for them to get their breathing back to normal,” Limpin said.

“Based on their marketing strategy, the vaping industry said it is less harmful but what we observe right now is the opposite... Our (lung doctors)... can see that vaping is more harmful since we didn’t see this problem in breathing and other lung problems to surface that fast compared to smoking cigarettes or tobacco,” she added.  ?Limpin said that a registry of vaping patients and their symptoms is necessary since records on vaping-related illnesses are mostly clinical anecdotes.

“We don’t have records on the effects of vaping yet. But the Philippine College of Chest Physicians will already start gathering such cases and their details,” she noted.

The Department of Health reported in 2019 the first case of electronic cigarette or vaping-associated lung injury in the country after a 16-year-old female from Central Visayas was hospitalized.