Around 400 hotels and restaurants in Ho Chi Minh City will join an ambitious campaign to adopt smoking-free areas.

Smoking is a disaster to community health

The city will apply a smoking-free zone model at 400 restaurants and hotels in districts 1, 3 and 5 initially. The campaign is expected to see from 30 to 70% of local hotels and restaurants to introduce smoke-free areas.

Hotels and restaurants will display stickers and posters advising customers not to smoke in different languages. Staff are required to persuade customers to hold parties without smoking.

Vietnam now has some 15.3 million adults who are smokers, in which, men account for 47.4% and women 1.4%.  According to the World Health Organisation up to 10% of Vietnamese population will die of smoking-related diseases by 2020.