UICC World Cancer Congress 2006

Objective:To analyse the effectiveness of training anganwadi workers by a cancer NGO for reducing of tobacco related cancers.

Methods:Rural areas of Goa State and many other States are served by Anganwadi Workers(AWW's) who are female workers with basic education of 8-10 standards attached to the State Social Welfare Department. An anganwadi covers an area containing about 1000 population. AWW is appointed among women staying in the village of the anganwadi. The tasks of AWW include managing a classroom for children below 6 years, to provide health advice to pregnant and lactating women, to distribute government supplied nutritional supplements to the children and women, and to visit all the houses of the anganwadi. In a six month programme in 2003 the cancer NGO, NOTE-India trained all 52 AWW's of a Primary Health Center in Goa for imparting knowledge of tobacco related cancers to the community of the anganwadis so that the tobacco users quit the habit and the risk of the cancers is reduced.

Results:In the initial survey of residents above age 15, 4563(27.2%) out of 16705 men and 2220(13.7%) out of 16185 women were tobacco users. In the repeat survey done after six months of educational intervention by AWW's , 521(11.4%) of tobacco using men and 460(20.7%) tobacco using women had quit the tobacco habit. It is seen that risk of tobacco related cancers in rural populations can be reduced by utilising services of trained female workers residing within the community.