Prevalence of smoking among health care providers in primary health care centers services in Buraydah city, Saudi Arabia in 2018

Dr. Ahmed Abdullah Alharbi; Dr.K.Chandra Sekhar

Volume : VIII, Issue : VI, June - 2019

Prevalence of smoking among health care providers in primary health care centers services in Buraydah city, Saudi Arabia in 2018

Dr. Ahmed Abdullah Alharbi, Dr. K. Chandra Sekhar

Abstract :

Despite the great efforts done by the government, there has been an increase in the number of people adopting smoking habit, among them health care professionals. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), tobacco smoking kills half of its users. Objective of the study is to estimate the prevalence of smoking, attitude and behaviour towards issues related to smoking and associations with socio–demographic factors. A Cross sectional observational study was conducted among different primary health care providers during the period from January 2018 to June 2018 in Buraidah. Data entry and analysis was done by using Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS 21.0 version). In the study population, prevalence of smoking among PHC health care providers was 23.7%. Maximum 34.8% were smokers in the age group of 30–39 years and about 44.4% started smoking at less than 18 years of their age. About influencing factors of smoking, there was 71.4% (45/63) of smoking was influenced by friends.Regarding special smoking cessation clinic question, about 44% of health care providers given response as strongly agree and 0.8% were given opinion as strongly disagree. Based on the study results, prevalence of smoking was noticed high among health care providers in Buraidah city and also noticed smoking on set early. Well–planned control programs are highly required to counter the high prevalence of smoking. Need large scale similar studies are required to substantiate the study findings in Buraidah city.