The 13th World Conference on Tobacco OR Health

Objective: Smoking has been identified as a risk factor for many diseases. This study was carried out to document the prevalence of smoking among expectant mothers receiving antenatal care in all the government-owned health facilities in Igbo- Ora, a town in South-Western Nigeria.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out and expectant mothers attending the antenatal clinics for the first time were interviewed.

Results: Three hundred women responded and the results of the initial assessment of the first 100 interviews are presented here. The participants ages ranged from 16 - 41 years, 80% had at least primary education, majority 92(92%) were married and 51(51%) were traders. Twenty-one (21%) were primigravidae.

Two women were current smokers, each smoking 2-3 sticks per day and neither of them felt there were any risks to them or to their babies in-utero . Another woman claimed to have smoked about 5 sticks of cigarette per day in the past, but she had since stopped smoking about 4 years preceding the study. Majority of the women felt that smoking should be banned in public places, however, one woman, a smoker; felt that it should not be banned as some smokers needed to smoke to enable them carry out their duties in their places of work optimally. It is to be expected that in the absence of concerted efforts at prevention, the number of mothers smoking will increase. Prevention programmes should therefore target women as well as men in order to prevent more women from picking up the habit.