Some 250,000 Turks quit smoking with help of ‘Alo 171’

ANKARA

Some 250,000 Turkish citizens have quit smoking with the help of “Alo 171,” a phone line connecting smokers with the health officials who help them to quit, the country’s Health Ministry has said.

In a statement issued for May 31, World No Tobacco Day, the ministry highlighted that more than 700,000 people called the line in 2021 and more than one third succeeded in quitting.

“Cigarettes are a prevalent poison in public. Smoking steals time off life expectancy, 15 years from women, 13 years from men,” Akif Topçuoğlu, the head of the Turkish Neurology Society, said.

When a citizen calls “Alo 171,” the line affiliated with the Health Ministry, to obtain medical assistance to quit smoking, officials direct the citizens to 577 related health centers across the country depending on the caller’s residential address.

The physicians at these centers, who have held more than 3.2 million physical examinations since 2010, help the citizens, the statement said on May 31.

“Around 10 million people worldwide die annually due to tobacco related illnesses. Smoking is the main cause of cancer,” professor Topçuoğlu said. “The main cause of cancer-related deaths, some 35 percent in men and some 15 percent in women, is smoking.”

Highlighting that smoking doubles the risk of stroke, the professor underlined, “The risk of stroke increases by 30 percent even when passive smoking.”

Listing the harm smoking does to the body, such as, “weaking the immune system,” “depression,” “infertility,” “early aging of the brain,” Topçuoğlu advised all smokers to call “Alo 171,” adding that “living a healthy life is impossible while smoking.”