The Tobacco Control Program in the states of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh in India have been granted an aid of $5 million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The funding will help Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) to pacify the National Tobacco Control Program in the two states.

The grant is for the project on Strengthening of Tobacco Control Efforts Through Innovative Partnerships and Strategies (STEPS).

It is expected that this financial aid will help in imparting district-specific strategic response in order to make people aware of the elevating global tobacco epidemic.

In Andhra Pradesh, STEPS project will cover Prakasam, Visakhapatnam, East Godavari, Mahboodnagar, Karim Nagar and Kurnool districts and Kheda, Rajkot, Banaskantha, Anand and Surat in Gujarat.

The grant was announced by the Gates Foundation on Saturday.

The grant has directly been offered to Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), which is a Delhi-based public-private partnership.

The grant has been provided for a period of three years.

It was informed by the PHFI in a release that smoking is responsible for killing about one million people in India every year. Mainly, people aged 30 to 69 are affected the most.

It has also been said that 18% of the students in Gujarat are into the habit of using tobacco.

In Andhra, five in 10 youth smoke in public places and over four in 10 belong to families where parents smoke, chew or consume tobacco.

The NTCP, under this project, intends to exhort the public against tobacco use by setting up testing labs and observing adult tobacco-use surveys.