Welcome and thank you for listening! The guest in this episode is Dr Kieran McLeod, a South African medical doctor and founder of ByeGwaai. Drawing on his passion for behaviour change and digital health, Kieran founded mobile app-based smoking cessation solution ByeGwaai - an evidence-based, easy-to-access and affordable program to help South Africans quit smoking. Dr Kieran shares about his journey how he saw his own mom struggling to quit smoking growing up, till how he now impacts many people's lives through his work. Most people think that smoking is disappearing and it's not something to be concerned about. The actual truty is that smoking has been on the rise. But interestingly, in South Africa in 2016, we had about 8 million tobacco users, which represented about 20% of the adult population. Another study was done in 2020 showing that suddenly we were up to 13 million tobacco users, which is about 30% of the adult population. That is a pretty substantial increase over a five year period, especially when we had a tobacco sales ban and obviously the Covid pandemic as well. About 35% of smokers who make New Year's resolutions, have quit smoking as one of their New Year's resolutions, but the sad thing is 80% of them will fail within a month of trying. Dr Kieran took advantage of these challenges and saw it as an opportunity to create change. Pregnancy for example is one of those opportune times to help people to quit smoking as it is already a time of great change and knowing that it negatively impacts pregnancy and birth outcomes. Oftentimes, healthcare professionals have limited training and experience to really assist their patients to quit smoking. He explains how his structured programme provides a holistic approach to assist people on their journey to quit smoking. To find out more about the ByeGwaai Smoking App, visit https://www.byegwaai.co.za/how-byegwaai-works Facebook & Instagram: @byegwaai If you are a smoker listening to this, you can be a lucky winner of a free Premium Membership to the ByeGwaai App by filling in this short survey. Thank you so much for joining us today. If you found this episode helpful please leave us a review or give us a rating as that helps us get the show out to more people. And don't forget to subscribe! We'd love to stay in touch and keep you updated with all our latest content & resources to equip & empower you. So if you're a midwife or any type of birth and baby worker go to sensitivemidwifery.co.za/freegift If you're a mom, visit sisterlilian.co.za/freegift for more training and resources. That way we can keep you up to date when we release new episodes like this plus a few other bonuses. Remember you're making a big difference because you're shaping the future of humankind. Thanks for listening and I look forward to journeying with you.

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