The Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has called for the need to undertake tobacco control research and identify gaps to provide a sound basis for the development of policies and programmes to retrench the devastation caused.
Dr Mrs Olivia Boateng, the Director of Tobacco and Substance Abuse at FDA, said this would complement the substantial progress Ghana had made in implementing tobacco control measures in line with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC).
She made the call during a stakeholder meeting on Ghana’s Needs Assessment Mission on the protocol to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products.
The Protocol seeks to eliminate all forms of illicit trade in tobacco products following the terms of Article 15 of the World Health Organisation (WHO) FCTC.
The meeting would look in depth at the problem of illicit tobacco to help understand the strengths and gaps in terms of elimination.
It was on the theme; ‘Accelerating the Implementation of the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.’
Tobacco remains one of the world’s greatest public health challenges, killing more than eight million people each year across the world and estimated that some 20-30 per cent of Ghana’s tobacco market was illicit.
Increased consumption of tobacco leads to public health harm and increases the economic costs that come from tobacco-related illnesses, while Illicit trade makes more tobacco available
on the market, at a lower cost and made more accessible to young people, causing significant losses in government revenue.
Dr Boateng said the absence of comprehensive smoke-free policies, advanced public sensitization of tobacco control provisions, tobacco industry interference, new and emerging trends of tobacco, as well as porous country borders were some of the challenges confronting tobacco controls in Ghana.
Moving forward, she said there was the need to develop a roadmap for the implementation of recommendations from needs assessment, and collaboration across all stakeholders’ levels and institutions and called for collaboration of the security services to address the smuggling of tobacco products at the borders.
Dr Seth Seaneke, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of FDA, said despite measures put in place for tobacco control there were setbacks in the product supply chain, which included tobacco smuggling.
He said the legislative recommendations offered by the Illicit Trade Protocol presented a unique operational advantage in advancing Ghana’s successes as a country in the fight against tobacco and counteracting the infiltration of the illicit tobacco trade in Ghana.
Dr Francis Kasolo, the WHO Representative in a speech read on his behalf by Ms Majorie Mupandare said tobacco threatened the public in Ghana and encouraged participants to give maximum support to the exercise.
Mr Andrew Black, Team Lead – Direct Assistance to Parties, WHO FCTC Secretariat, said it was for these reasons that the international community agreed on the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade in Tobacco Products.
‘This is a treaty that has been made under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and it gives governments a strategy to get control of illicit tobacco,’ he said.
Mr Black commended Ghana for trying to strengthen tobacco taxation and ratifying the Protocol to show great willingness to its implementation and called for coordination within governments to create the most efficient system to tackle illicit tobacco.
Source: Ghana News Agency
