Centaur Pharmaceuticals, the leaders in the anti-cold segment recently conducted the ‘Common Cold Awareness Week’, a nation-wide campaign from September 10th to 15th, 2018 to mark ‘Anti Cold Day’ on September 15th.  The campaign aimed to raise awareness about common cold with the intent to avoid self-medication and urged people to consult a Doctor. Common cold is an acute condition with symptoms like congestion or runny nose, sneezing, watery eyes, sore throat, loss of appetite, low fever, headaches, earaches, nausea sensation etc. Many people tend to ignore it or take medicines on their own. Such acute conditions cause substantial productivity loss and missed school days because of high prevalence in related age groups.

Over a decade, Centaur has been undertaking the ‘Common Cold Awareness Week’ campaign to prevent people from self-medication and encourage them to consult a doctor. Speaking on this occasion S. D. Sawant, Chairman and Managing Director, Centaur Pharmaceuticals said, “Centaur has been a leader in the cold category with its brand ‘Sinarest’ and its extensions. Over the years we have observed that self-medication has been on the rise. As a category leader, we thought it is our responsibility to educate the consumers and that is the reason we have been organising the Anti-cold awareness week. We have been extremely pleased that with the changing times, we have used Digital media to propagate the campaign this year.”

Centaur launched an online Facebook community page – Nosipedia, to help spread the word with a viral video that has already crossed over 1 lakh views. As a part of the drive, the entire field force reached out to approximately 1 lakh Doctors and 25 lakh patients through their clinics spreading awareness about Common Cold and the right way to deal with it. The team also conducted school & college contact programs, in-clinic promotions and also worked closely with leading Doctors to help spread the word.

Sawant further added, “Currently, on Google there are over 2 lakh searches every month about the category ‘common cold’, which clearly indicates that people wanted authentic information. So we co-created this digital campaign ‘Nosipedia’ along with Doctors and launched the 1st of its kind digital initiative to create awareness.” Centaur Pharma plans to continue with this effort round the year and continue to create awareness about the category.