The CTCA Team with Dr Paolo Giambelli in stripped shirt at the Italian Cooperation Offices in Kampala
‘ The Italian Cooperation has no objection to tobacco control interventions. Italy has a tobacco control law that is being implemented, and therefore my government has no resistance to being part of the general tobacco control campaign, as long a there is demand from the government of Uganda ’.
Dr. Giambelli was meeting with a delegation from CTCA and WHO TFI, at his office in Kampala, Thursday March 21, 2013. The meeting is part of CTCA’s efforts to interest development partners into prioritizing tobacco control in their development agendas.
He however cautioned that their support as Development Partners can only be effected if the government of Uganda identifies tobacco control as critical to fighting poverty and improving the health of its people. Accordingly, Dr. Giambelli urged the CTCA to ensure that the Ministry of Health and indeed the Government of Uganda takes on tobacco control as a priority development agenda .
Dr. Vinayak Prasad, WHO TFI, who was part of the CTCA delegation, said the role of WHO is to provide guidelines for arresting the tobacco epidemic, which he said has been done through the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control ( FCTC), that has been signed and ratified by majority of the African countries. He added that at country level, WHO would like to seek the assistance of the Development Partners to mainstream tobacco control interventions into the various development agenda.
The Manager of the Centre, Dr. Possy Mugyenyi said that while CTCA is yet to carry out a comprehensive health cost benefit analysis of tobacco, findings from the 2010 Health Demographic Survey indicate that households are spending more on tobacco products than what government is spending on health.
He said the Centre, together with the Ministry of Agriculture, has visited the tobacco farmers and, with the farmers’ guidance, established that when you cost all the inputs into tobacco growing, the farmers accrue a net negative income of about 3.2 million Uganda Shillings per acre. This is as opposed to a net positive income of about 1.9 million Uganda shilling s from an alternative crop like coffee grown on one acre.
Dr. Mugyenyi said the Ministry of Agriculture has already identified and zoned out viable alternative enterprises for the entire country, adding that what needs to be done if for the government to use the existing structures to assist the famers to gradually transit from tobacco growing, to other alternatives. This he said, is catered for in the proposed tobacco control Bill.