Author: Himalaya Post

Kathmandu- Recently the number of young age group and female smokers has been increasing in Nepal . Speaking at a multi sectoral Workshop on Preventing Tobacco Epidemic in Responding to communicable and non communicable Diseases ‘Shared Responsibilities of National and Subnational Government’ organized by Action Nepal on Wednesday, Member Secretary and Executive Chief of the Nepal Health Research Council (NHRC) Dr. Pradip Gyawali said that the number of young age group and female smokers has been increasing in Nepal recently. ‘Even though the number of smokers in Nepal has decreased by 2019, the number of women and young smokers has increased,’ he stated. Saying that smoking is also a major factor in increasing mortality, he added, ‘Another study conducted in 2019 showed that smoking increased the risk of death in 17.7 percent of the people.’ Studies conducted in Nepal from 2016 to 2018 show that smoking increases the risk of death in most people over the age of 20 due to COPD (severe asthma). Smoking, which is the leading cause of death from non-communicable diseases, is causing an average of 25,000 deaths annually in Nepal. ‘This is four times more than the number of deaths from Covid-19,’ said Ananda Bahadur Chand, chairman of the organization. ‘Since the onset of the Covid-19 infection, the death toll has risen to 11,500 (as of Tuesday evening), with 24,800 deaths annually due to...

Lalitpur- Three out of every one thousand children in Nepal suffer from mental disorder. This was stated by Aditya Dangol, Program Officer of the Foundation while speaking at the ‘Annual Principal’s Convention’ organized by the Sambhavya Foundation on Friday. He also informed that 12.9 percent children in the age group of 13-17 years have mental health problems in Nepal. Officer Dangol argued that, among the general public lack of proper knowledge about mental health  is one of the major reasons of it. ‘So, Sambhavya is moving ahead with a major campaign to solve this problem by saying that ‘there should be a mental counsellor in every school’, he said. Speaking on the occasion, Caribbean School Principal Santosh Dahal said that at present most of the children have problems with the learning process due to ‘Digital Autism’. Stating that this problem appears in children from home, he said, ‘It seems that 30 percent of the children in Montessori are affected by this problem.’ Other participants in the program, which focused on the need for mental health in schools and how to access it, shared their experiences of an increase in antisocial activities such as depression and loneliness in most children after the Covid-19 epidemic. He also stressed on the need for every parent and teacher to listen to their children carefully and try to understand them in order to solve...