Zambian journalists learn dangers associated with indiscriminate smoking and cultivation of tobacco
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#tobaccocontrolbeyondZambia
By Derrick Sinjela
A RANGE of things need to be done to curtail supply and demand through harm reduction strategies that aim at reducing suppy, eliminate or reduce consumption and exposure to any form of tobacco,” prods Professor Fastone Mathew Goma
Officiating at a Centre for Primary
Care Research -University of Zambia School of Medicine Media Workshop, at Mika Lodge, Jesmodine, on Saturday 14th March 2020, Professor Goma says once people know ramifications of smoking, such enslaved communities will heed a tobacco-free language.
Professor Goma wondered possibility of letting a monkey guard a maize field, pointing out that the British American Tobacco want to participate in measures fighting tobacco usage.
“A range of things supply demand and harm reduction strategies that aim at reducing suppy, eliminate or reduce consumption and exposure of tobacco,” said Professor Goma to a group of journalists belonging to the Zambia Media Network Against Tobacco.
On the efficacy as to why preaching messages of control of tobacco, Professor Goma noted that it is a desease vector and global agent of death, at 8 million, and in Zambia numbers of death associated to tobacco growing pegs the number at 7, 124, and 800 from second smoking angle.
Professor Fastone Mathew Goma
“We need to halt and reverse growing and consumption of tobacco. While smoking is reducing in the Western world, but Zambia and other developing countries continue glorifying it’s growing and consumption.
In our view, the only people benefiting from tobacco are global brands while Zambian farmers act as cheap slave labour,” laments Professor Goma.
Professor Goma noted that a lot of water bodies are destroyed resulting into deforestation and erosion of nutrients in Zambian soil.
Professor Goma expressed worry that the whole economy in Nkehema in Kaoma, Western Provinces is tobacco led and thus heightening childhood malnutrition and resultant stunting.
“There is a lot of ignorance among farmers, who need to know that tobacco is not a lucrative crop, and continues to increase disease burden, with 40 types cancer being associated with smoking,” said Professor Goma.
For instance, in 2019, 7, 124 died in Zambia and recollected that at graduation in his class of 54 only one used to smoke and the classmate died at 54 from throat cancer,” worried a concerning Professor Goma.
