Tobacco control campaign begins in Nigeria as Govt releases tobacco survey
More than 600,000 who
die annually from tobacco related diseases are nonsmokers exposed to
second-hand smoke. The world’s leading preventable cause of death
claiming the lives of 6 million people each year, tobacco is a slow, but more
often than not, sure killer. Numbers do not lie.
They aren’t pretty, but they represent the hard facts about the effects of
tobacco worldwide. Most of tobacco’s damage to health does not become
evident until years or even decades after the onset of use. Continue...
There are currently
no national restrictions on the advertising and promotion of tobacco use in
Nigeria. A campaign has recently been launched
to raise awareness on the various health risks of smoking and second hand
smoke, as well as the toll of tobacco use on the Nigerian population. Tobacco
Control Nigeria is a behavioural change and public health campaign project
using Social Media to advance tobacco control and support the passage of a comprehensive
Tobacco Control (TC) law compliant with the World Health Organization’s
Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
According to the project campaign manager, Olamide
Egbayelo “we hope to nurture and give
voice to a community of persons focused on ensuring that tobacco companies
carry out their advertising and marketing responsibly. We want to ensure that
Nigerian children are properly protected from pressures to take up smoking,
that public places are protected from the tyranny of secondhand smoke, that
persons who wish to quit smoking find the support they require.” The project
will be launched in August.
However, in 2012, Nigeria conducted the
Global Adults Tobacco Survey (GATS) and is the first country in the African
region to do so. GATS aims to assist countries address selected demand-related
articles of the World Health Organization on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). It
also further supports the WHO MPOWER policy package
The report
reveals that exposure to
secondhand smoke is highest among those who visited restaurants. 29.3%
of adults (6.4 million adults) were exposed to tobacco smoke when visiting
restaurants. Nigeria has
the opportunity to focus on prevention, stop initiation, and further decrease
prevalence rates. A copy of the full GATS report can be downloaded here
If you would like more information
about this campaign, please visit
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TobaccoCtrl
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TobaccoCtrl
Google Plus: https://gplus.to/TobaccoCtrl
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