13 Feb 2014

Tobacco smoking has killed more than 100 million people in the past century. This is equal to the number of lives that were claimed by both World War I and II, says Ms Joy Phumaphi.

Speaking at a breakfast meeting hosted by the Anti-Tobacco Network (ATN), she said every Motswana should know the horrendous effects of tobacco use as the country continued to lose people to tobacco. “Tobacco will kill you, it will limit your potential, and it will kill your dreams,” she said.

Having recently joined ATN as a celebrity endorser, Ms Phumaphi said what made tobacco even more dangerous was that, “ we have lived with it for so long and we have become so comfortable with smoking, that despite the overwhelming, irrefutable evidence, we still do not make the link between tobacco use and illnesses such as heart, liver, and lung diseases and the alarming incidences of cancer,” she said.

She said the country continued to suffer economically due to the sickness or death of critical economy drivers being affected by tobacco use. “We have lost and are continuing to lose vital resources as we train people who become too sick to work and or die before they can contribute fully. We lose valuable resources to financing the treatment and management of major diseases, something which we would not be doing if we kicked tobacco out of our country,” she said.

Ms Phumaphi said she joined ATN so as to help the organisation support the implementation of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). She said the framework convention on tobacco control, which Botswana had signed and acceded to, provided ammunition for the country to win the war against tobacco use.

“Domesticating the convention through appropriate laws and regulations, as well as enforcement is an urgent priority,” said Ms Phumaphi. She indicated that ATN supported government in its determination to comply with the FCTC and to domesticate the convention in Botswana.

“His Excellency the President announced the repeal of the Control of Smoking Act of 1992 in his state of the nation address to allow Botswana to come up with a comprehensive legislation aligned to the FCTC,” she said. For her part, WHO representative, Dr Felicitas Zawaira said the FCTC is the first international treaty negotiated under the auspices of WHO and was adopted by the World Health Assembly on May 21, 2003 and came to force on February 27, 2005.

“Currently 168 countries have signed the convention and 177 have ratified it. Botswana is one of those countries to have done both,” she said. ENDS