Strict enforcement of the amended Tobacco Control Act (TCA) has become an essence of the time to save the young generations as well as thousands of human lives annually in the country, speakers said here yesterday.They were addressing a training course on ‘Enforcement of Tobacco Control Law’ organised by Association for Community Development (ACD) under the People’s Initiative to Tobacco Control in Rajshahi and Rangpur Divisions programme at the hall room of Hotel Tilottoma in the city.Twenty-five Sanitary Inspectors from the district and upazila towns and pourashavas of Rangpur division participated in the training course presided over by Rangpur Divisional Director (Health) Dr Sukumar Roy in the chair.Additional Divisional Commissioner Kazi Hassan Ahmed and Civil Surgeon of Rangpur Dr Mozammel Hossain attended and addressed the inaugural and concluding ceremonies of the training course as the chief guests respectively.Focal Person of Tobacco Control Coalition (TCC) and Editor of the Daily Rangpur Chitra Shushanto Bhowmick delivered welcome speech narrating various negative aspects of smoking and using tobacco products.Project Coordinator of ACD Ehsanul Amin delivered his speech on the amended TCA, elaborated the goals of the training course and findings of their field level studies on the present enforcement situation of the amended TCA in the region.Additional Deputy Commissioner (General) Shahidul Islam, Additional Director of the Health City Merajul Mohsin and TCC Member Ahsan Habib Rabu also spoke in the training course moderated by Programme Officer of ACD Shariful Islam Shamim.
The speakers stressed for creating public awareness about harms of using tobacco products, including smoking, and tobacco-related diseases especially those which have been killing millions of people in the globe annually posing a real threat to human civilisation.
They said there are some 4,000 harmful substances in tobacco and 50 of them are responsible for causing various types of cancers silently leading millions of people towards definite deaths.“There is not a single benefit of tobacco”, they said and asked for strengthening activities of the Anti Tobacco Task Force, monitoring systems, launching anti-tobacco movement and insertion of curriculum in schoolbooks to reduce tobacco use for saving lives.
They said 156 people are dying daily consuming tobacco products alone in the country and 1.2 million suffering from lung cancer, cerebra- vascular, coronary artery, chronic obstructive pulmonary and other tobacco-attributable diseases.They called upon the Sanitary Inspectors and all concerned for strict enforcement of the amended TCA to stop smoking in all public places to also save 4.20 crore people from indirect smoking and thousands of human lives annually.BSS, Rangpur
