Tobacco Day: Enjoy life without destroying your health, Heart Foundation tells Nigerian youths
By Adeyemi Adeleye
The Nigerian Heart Foundation (NHF) on Monday called on Nigerian youths to cease tobacco smoking in all its forms for healthy living and fuller life and advocated strong tobacco cessation policies.
Dr Oluwakemi Odukoya, the Director, Tobacco Committee, NHF, who made that call at a virtual meeting to commemorate the 2021 World No Tobacco Day in Lagos, said the campaign was to reduce the diseases and deaths caused by tobacco consumption.
Odukoya. an Associate Professor of Public Health, Department of Community Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine, University of Lagos, urged the policies and decision-makers to create an environment to allow cessation of tobacco use.
She said: “The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health threat the world has ever faced, killing more than 8 million people a year around the world.
“More than 7 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 1.2 million are the result of non-smokers being expose to second-hand smoke. Tobacco-related ailments account for substantial healthcare and economic costs.
“We want to let current smokers know that help exists and that they can stop smoking as millions of smokers have stopped worldwide. We need to keep raising the awareness particularly among young people.”
The director urged all stakeholders to do everything they could to prevent young people from starting to use tobacco while efforts were geared towards increasing access to cessation services, awareness and empowerment of tobacco users.
“We want the government to create an environment that enables easier tobacco cessation for current smokers, create an environment that makes it difficult for initiation to occur among young people, create an environment that helps the average Nigerian who is smoker to stop smoking.
“Tobacco use contributes to poverty by diverting household spending from basic needs such as food and shelter to tobacco and also significant health care costs for treating diseases caused by tobacco use.
“All forms of tobacco are harmful and there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco. Smoking causes around seven out of every 10 cases of lung cancer (70 per cent). It also causes heart disease, stroke, lung diseases, diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
“Smoking also increases risk for tuberculosis, certain eye diseases and problems of immune system, including rheumatoid arthritis,” Odukoya added.
Odukoya urged the Non Government Organisations and the media to increase advocacies and awareness for make people know that tobacco smoking in all forms is dangerous.
She said that the academia should continue to conduct research that would influence government to make stronger tobacco control policies.
The director urged the celebrities and youth pubic influencers to stop smoking and join in the crusade to control use of tobacco in Nigeria.
“There is no still so much room for improvement. There are still so.many provisions in the National Tobacco Control Act that we know are not being enforced. So, while we celebrate that little gains that we have made, we know that we are definitely not there yet.
“Government should create that enabling environment to.make sure that the country enforce the Provisions of the National Tobacco Control Act for all Nigerians, particularly our children.
“We will tell our youths that it is cool not to smoke. We can have a lovely wonderful life without destroying and damaging your health,” she added.
The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, in his message, said that the commemoration was to remind everyone that tobacco kills half of its users.
According to Moeti, every year, around 1.2 million non-smokers also die from exposure to tobacco smoke.
“Tobacco use harms nearly every organ in the human body. Even smoking one cigarette a day can seriously harm a person’s health. Tobacco use can lead to lung, mouth, throat, oesophagus, stomach, bowel and other cancers.
“It increases the risk of chest and lung infections, heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other conditions. There is no safe form of tobacco,” the WHO director said.
Moeti noted that the theme of 2021 commemoration was “Commit to quit” because the choice to stop tobacco use remained in the hand of individuals..
The director, who said that public health advocates should therefore actively pursue counter-marketing campaigns that highlight the many risks of tobacco use, said WHO had scaled-up programmes to .make people quit tobacco.
Also speaking, Dr Kingsley Akinroye, the Executive Director of NHF, said that governments should know that awareness to.make people quit tobacco was still very poor and there was the need for stronger polices against tobacco use.
The World Health Organisation has set aside May 31 annually to mark World No Tobacco Day, to raise awareness of the of tobacco to control smoking.
