Kenya Cabinet Secretary for Health, Dr Cleopas Mailu, has said the ministry would ensure that proper tobacco laws are put in place in Kenya as one effective way of dealing with non-communicable diseases.
Mailu made the remarks at an event in Nairobi marking the World Health Day whose theme was “Diabetes is preventable and manageable”.
Findings published in the 2015 International Tobacco Control (ITC) Kenya National Report showed that tobacco was the most preventable cause of non-communicable diseases which include cancers, heart diseases, lung diseases and diabetes.
Mailu said the health ministry recognised the role of tobacco as a cause of diabetes and was committed to ensuring that Kenyans had access to good health standards in line with health goals set out in the Constitution.
He noted that the trend of non-communicable diseases in Kenya was alarming.
The new anti-tobacco campaign as envisaged by the health cabinet secretary is widely seen by health professionals as the final lap to compliance with the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the public-health treaty ratified by Kenya in 2004.
Mailu reminded Kenyans that the ministry of health and public health advocates have had to overcome strong opposition by the powerful tobacco industry, to get the Tobacco Control Act enacted. He noted that a recent local court defeat of the powerful tobacco barons is just what the ministry needed to re-ignite full implementation of the act.
The ITC report noted that Kenya provided leadership in Africa in tobacco control, having enacted and partially implemented the Tobacco Control Act in August 2007.
Back then, the Kenya Parliament was widely congratulated by anti-tobacco global players for “putting public health firmly above private profit”.
The report said Kenya ratified the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004 and passed the Tobacco Control Act 2007 to control smoking in public places, ban direct and indirect advertising, and ban the sale of tobacco products to and by minors.
One USA lobby group, “Tobacco-free kids”, praised the Tobacco Control Act for partial fulfillment of international standards and hoped that a future Kenyan Parliament would ban smoking in all public places and eliminate designated smoking areas in order to comply with international standards.
One of the pending issues the government was tasked with under the Tobacco Control Act was to find alternative livelihoods for Kenya’s 22 000 tobacco farmers who raise the crop on five percent of the nation’s arable land, said the USA lobby group. – African News Agency (ANA)