Government on Wednesday launched its first tobacco survey on youth with results indicating that twenty percent of students, twenty-two percent of boys and sixteen of girls use tobacco and its related products.
By Nyasha N Mukapiko
These statistics were revealed at the launch of the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GTYS) at Parirenyatwa hospital.
The launch was running under the theme “Let’s protect our youth from tobacco use”.
Speaking on behalf of the Minister of Health and Child Welfare, Executive Chairman of the Health Service Board (HSB), Dr Lovemore Mbengaranwa indicated that in every six and a half seconds a person dies from tobacco use.
“The study informs us that our youths in schools are using tobacco and this means we should enhance our capacity as a country to rapidly, implement and evaluate tobacco control and prevention programs. This will save lives, reduce illness, and help reduce the economic burden associated with tobacco related illness and lost productivity”, Dr Mbengeranwa said.
Further statistics revealed that 16.2% of students, 17.3 of boys, and 12.8% of girls currently smoke tobacco.
Principal Director in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary education, Jacob Gonese, said his ministry will approach the ministry of health to help them equip more than hundred thousand teachers with skills to advice, persuade as well as to give professional counseling to students on how to quit smoking.
In her presentation Dr Shungu Munyati, the Assistant Director- General at Biomedical Research and Training Institute said tobacco was leading cause of death in the world after hypertension.
“Tobacco is currently causing 5 million deaths annually, worldwide. If the current trend continues it is predicted that 10 million deaths will be recorded annually by 2025 and lots of deaths are in the developing country, so it’s really major serious public health problem”, Dr Munyati said.
Dr Munyati further elaborated that smoking was more common among the less educated and the poor in developing nations.
WHO representative in Zimbabwe, Dr David Okello recommended the country to promote and strengthen public awareness on tobacco, monitor and regulate tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship and assist students who are addicted to quit tobacco.
GYTS was conducted in Zimbabwe in 2014 by the ministry of health and child welfare. GYTS is a component of the Global standard for systematically monitoring youth tobacco use and tracking key tobacco control indicators.
GYTS is a nationally representative school based survey of students in grades associated with 13 to 15 years of age that is grade seven, forms 1 to 3 and a total number of 6.427 students from both government and private schools completed the survey. GYTS is an initiative of WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) to generate comparable data within and across countries.
Zimbabwe approved accession of WHO FCTC in July 2014 and as of March 2015 she has since been a member.
Zimbabwe’s economy is agro-based with tobacco being the major cash-crop grown, currently in Africa Zimbabwe is the leading tobacco producer and numbers four in the world.
