World No Tobacco Day
May 31 of every year is observed as World No Tobacco Day (WNTD). Governments and Tobacco control advocates all over the world carry out various activities aimed at drawing attention to devastating effects of tobacco use. The day is meant to encourage a 24-hour period of abstinence from all forms of tobacco consumption across the globe.
Each year, the WHO selects a theme for the day in order to create a more unified global message for WNTD. This theme then becomes the central component for governments for all their tobacco-related activities for the following year. The theme for this year – (May 31 2012- May 31 2013 ) is Tobacco Industry Interference. The theme was aimed at ensuring that countries focus on the need to expose and counter the tobacco industry’s bold and increasingly aggressive attempts to undermine global tobacco control efforts.
The themes for the last ten years include;
2012 Tobacco industry interference
2011 The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
2010 Gender and tobacco with an emphasis on marketing to women
2008 Tobacco-free youth
2007 Smoke free inside
2006 Tobacco: deadly in any form or disguise
2005 Health professionals against tobacco
2004 Tobacco and poverty, a vicious circle
2003 Tobacco free film, tobacco free fashion
The Centre for Tobacco Control in Africa (CTCA) supports is target countries to carry out various advocacy and awareness raising activities. This year, a tobacco Industry Monitoring Tool was developed and three of the CTCA target countries were assisted to carry out an assessment of the Tobacco Industry activities in their countries.