Reducing tobacco use in a country is only possible if a government has a plan on how they can tackle this problem.
For governments, this means that they need a National Tobacco Control Programme, or an NTCP. An NTCP has four main purposes. It helps to prioritise tobacco control, it helps governments to define an intervention package to have a comprehensive tobacco control response, it ensures that these interventions are financed and it helps to generate tobacco control data.
In Burkina Faso, just under 20% of people between the ages of 25 and 64 smoke in Burkina Faso, according to the 2013 WHO STEP wise survey. Among men, this figure sits at 29% and among women it is 11.8%. The high rates of tobacco use is more than enough reason for the country to develop and NTCP.
And that is exactly what they did 2020. In Burkina Faso, the National Tobacco Control Programme was drawn up at a drafting workshop, which took place from June 15 to 19, 2020.
The meeting was funded by the CTCA, which supports tobacco control capacity development in Burkina Faso along with six other countries in Africa. The CTCA’s technical assistant also attended the meeting and was critical in the formulation of the document.
While the purpose of workshop was to develop draft 1 of the NTCP document, it specifically helped the drafters to write up the justification of why an NTCP needed to be developed. The drafters were able to discuss the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of tobacco control in Burkina Faso, and to identify the major challenges of the future NTCP
The drafters also defined the vision and objectives of the NTCP and designed a strategic plan with priority actions,
Now that the document has been drawn up it will be sent to the resource people who missed the meeting for their inputs and comments. Once this has happened a validation meeting with the large team including civil society and the other tobacco control stakeholders in Burkina Faso will take place.
The validated version of the document will then be sent to the cabinet of the ministry for inputs and comment. An inter-ministerial decree will then be drafted which will then be sent to the ministry council.