Smoking Susceptibility and Intention to Smoke among Secondary School Adolescents in Nepal.

BACKGROUND: Smoking Susceptibility (SS) and Intention to Smoke (IS) are important characteristics of early stages of smoking career of adolescents. Several psychosocial factors play crucial roles in prevention of smoking initiation among adolescents. This study utilized the recent Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) data of Nepal with the main aim to correlate factors associated with SS and IS. METHODS: Nationally representative data on 2,878 school going Nepalese adolescents were collected through second GYTS using two-stage cluster sampling. An anonymous and self -administrated questionnaire was used to collect information on smoking related variables. We applied multivariable logistic regression to examine relationship between risk factors (demographic, environmental, motivating and programmatic variables) and SS and IS. RESULTS: The prevalence of SS and IS among never smokers was 22.8% (95% CI: 21.2, 24.5) &11.4% (10.2, 12.6) respectively. Factors found associated with respect to different variables were as follows: SS -being a male (AOR: 1.32; 95% CI 1.04, 1.69), friend smoking (1.97; 1.53, 2.52), offered free cigarettes (1.41; 1.03, 1.93), parental smoking (1.68; 1.32, 2.12); IS -being a male (1.43; 1.04, 1.97), and parental tobacco use (1.52; 1.11, 2.08). The following factors were protective measures for SS and IS - age, and antismoking messages. CONCLUSIONS: Smoking susceptibility and intention to smoke is prevalent in Nepalese school going adolescents. Several aforementioned factors are responsible to become susceptible and intention to smoke. Therefore, an understanding of the influencing factors of adolescents provides important insight for comprehensive school based tobacco intervention programs.

Education: the key to curb HIV and AIDS epidemic.

Overwhelming impact has been established among different aspects and burden of incurable HIV and AIDS is increasing day-by-day globally. The aim of this article is to discuss the potential benefits and strengths of an education system in the absence of remedy and help to develop future strategies. Education has great impact on HIV and AIDS and vice-versa. An education plays a vital role to curb the transmission of HIV and AIDS thorough capacity building, provides information, reduces vulnerability, empowerment, improve life skill, maintain equity, reduce dependence, stigma, and discrimination, where are abundance foundations for HIV infection. HIV and AIDS has role for devastation of education system and level which has great impact on productivity, economic growth, demand, supply and daily life of human being. Low and middle income countries needs to be improve recording and reporting systems related to impact of HIV and AIDS on education. By analyzing preceding evidences, policy makers or governance feels to reformulate policies relating to education and health. Evidence based policy and program will be more useful to address distressing squall of epidemic.