Gambia: Media Is Key to Tackle Tobacco Use
The ministry of health and social welfare is working in partnership with the world lung foundation, an international organization working in the area of tobacco control had a media briefing with the media practitioners on how and why it is important to advocate for tobacco control in the country. With this partnership, the foundation will be providing technical assistance to the Gambia for the implementation of articles 11 and 12 (media campaign and pictorial warning) of the framework convention on tobacco control.
The ministry brought together different media outlets on the 28th of September, 2013 at the Central Medical store in Koru to look into issues of how to tackle the use of tobacco and advertisement. Mr.Modou Njie, the director of health promotion and education said, the risk factors of non-communicable diseases, have been doing a lot on tobacco control but have not made any meaningful development. He noted that their relation with the media is cordial. Mr.Njai said the pictorial warnings will ring the bell to any smoker to speedy the person to quit and those that have never tested it before to avoid it.
Mr.Njie said the objective of the visit and partnership is to assist the government of the Gambia/ministry of health and social welfare in the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of a nation- wide mass media communication tobacco control campaign, targeting current and potential tobacco users ; planning and developing of the pictorial health warning on tobacco products.
"The Gambia is chosen because of its track record and political commitment to tobacco control, having ratified the WHO framework convention on tobacco control in 2007 and for successful conduct of the need assessment on the implementation of the said convention in 2002," He said. The consultant, Rebecca Perl, from the lung foundation said that her foundation works with 106 social marketing campaign and 24 countries around the world. She noted that article 11 of the framework convention on tobacco control looks at packing and labeling of tobacco products 9pack warning) and article 12 deals with education, communication, training and public awareness (mass media campaigns.
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