About 500,000 die of smoking related diseases every year in USA, said Dr D.Robert McCaffree, professor of Medicine at University of Oklahoma. Every day 3,000 teenagers start smoking in US. "We have started a public education programme at school level to stop this tobacco menace. Moreover, it's illegal to promote tobacco on T.V." The American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) is trying to stop the advertisement of cigarettes on billboards and in newspapers, said Dr Robert. "We are also thinking of raising price of cigarettes as teenagers are very sensitive to price."

Dr David Eubanks from Chicago stressed on the involvement of non-physician health care workers to assist doctors in patient care so that they are able to see more patients. He said that in a country like India, with huge population and less number of doctors, it becomes more important.

Indian chest physicians have collaborated with ACCP to benefit from their experience and use of sophisticated machinery with main stress on education, informed Dr Eubanks.

Dr Jindal said that multicentric studies with same standards needed to be done on the increased use of tobacco in India. "During this conference, we stressed on the compilation of data in different centres in the country, which will help us to tackle tobacco problem in a better way," he said.