|
|
|
|
| National |
| Govt, Cama agree that tobacco kills |
|
by
Joseph Langa, 30 September 2003
-
19:45:52
|
Government and Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) on Tuesday joined forces in warning people, notably the youth, against smoking tobacco, describing it as a chief preventable cause of death that kills over four million people every year.
Ministry of Health acting chief research officer Willard Kazembe and Cama executive director John Kapito said the figure is expected to rise to 10 million in the near future, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
“Seven million of these [tobacco related] deaths will occur in developing countries like Malawi where children are at risk of taking up smoking as a habit,” said Kazembe.
The two officials were speaking at a stakeholders meeting in Lilongwe where Cama was disseminating findings of a Global Youth Tobacco Survey for Malawi conducted in selected districts of the country with support from the WHO and Centre for Disease Control.
According to Kapito, the survey, which was also conducted in other countries of the world, is aimed at finding out the prevalence of tobacco smoking among the youth to use the findings as a tool to fight the malpractice.
He said the survey has shown that most children are at risk of dying of tobacco related diseases because they start smoking as a habit mainly because of advertisements placed on billboards.
“There is need for government to quickly sign the WHO anti-tobacco legislation which will regulate marketing and distribution of tobacco products and ban tobacco advertisements and tobacco sponsorship to sports,” said Kapito.
He was referring to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which Malawi already adopted, but is yet to sign. Ministry of Health chief technical advisor Wesley Sangala said recently that Malawi will sign the legislation.
The framework is currently attracting angry reactions from most captains of the tobacco industry, notably Tobacco Association of Malawi (Tama), which says Malawi should not sign the treaty because “we will be sending a bad signal to the buyers since we rely on the crop as a major foreign exchange earner”.
But Kapito said he has not seen any notable contribution tobacco has made to the country’s economy apart from benefiting the buyers, saying growing of the leaf should be stopped because “a cigarette is the only consumer product that when consumed kills half of its regular users”. |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
