Abstract: Background: Tobacco kills more than 1million annually in India. 266.8 million people are current tobacco users and a substantial number of people exposed to secondhand smoke are at increased risk of CVDs. Its high time to address the burdens caused by tobacco usage.
Objective: To assess the epidemiological pattern about the tobacco usage and factors associated with it in the rural area of Puducherry.
Materials and Methods: This was a cross sectional study done in the field practicing area of Sri Lakshmi Narayana Institute of medical sciences from April to June 2019 with sample size of 200.A pre tested structured questionnaire was used to assess the sociodemographic and tobacco usage domains. Mean, proportions and chi square test was used to analysis the collected data with SPSS version 21.
Result: The mean age of the study group is 45.8±15.2 yrs. In our study 28% of the population belonged to 16 to 35 yrs,42.5% of them belonged to 35 to 55 yrs and 29.5% belonged to 55 yrs and above.60.5% were male and 39.5% were female. In our study highly significant association was found between gender and type of tobacco usage (smoking type vs smokeless type)and p value is <0.001, gender and quality of cigarettes per day with p value <0.001 and significant association between gender frequency of smokeless type tobacco usage per day with p value<0.05
Conclusion: Our study shows the present epidemiological factors associated with tobacco usage and gaps in the prevention program. The present study helps in designing a module to create awareness among the tobacco users of rural Puducherry.
