Poor implementation and low compliance rate to the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO/ FCTC) guideline in Nigeria is slowing the fight against tobacco in the country, experts have pointed out.

Every year, on May 31, WHO and its partners mark the World No Tobacco Day (WNTD), highlighting the health and other risks associated with tobacco use, and advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption.

The theme of this year’s celebration, ‘Tobacco and heart disease’ focuses on the impact tobacco has on the cardiovascular health of people worldwide.

Kingsley Akinroye , cardiovascular health physician, and executive director, Nigeria Heart Foundation, who spoke to BusinessDay on the ‘World’s No Tobacco Day’, said that the first step have been taken by recent review of tobacco and alcohol taxes, which is to be effective on the 1st of June, 2018, but the FCTC is supposed to be implemented in the states of the country.

“Four states have domesticated the anti-Tobacco law. For example, Lagos State government enforcement of the law on penalising people smoking in smoke-free areas would be an encouraging start-off, but is not yet effective in the state”

However, “government must intensify its efforts at ensuring the anti-tobacco law to be effectively implemented with enforcement of the laws at the National level and also the involvement of the whole population, multi-stakeholders, CSOs, and industries these can be achievable,” said Akinroye.

Despite the known harms of tobacco to heart health, and the availability of solutions to reduce related death and disease, knowledge among large sections of the public that tobacco is one of the leading causes of cardiovascular diseases is low.

Akinroye noted that tobacco is the number one poison that damages the heart, leading to reduction of life span through promotion of hypertension, stroke, premature death and disability.

“Tobacco is no friend to anyone, from the new born to the young and the elderly; therefore everyone should choose health and not tobacco,” he added.

According to the WHO, the aim of the campaign this year is to increase awareness on the link between tobacco and heart and other cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including stroke, which combined are the world’s leading causes of death; and feasible actions and measures that key audiences, including governments and the public, can take to reduce the risks to heart health posed by tobacco.

The global tobacco epidemic kills more than seven million people each year. Nearly 80 per cent of the more than one billion smokers worldwide live in low- and middle-income countries, where the burden of tobacco-related illness and death is heaviest.

According to scientists, tobacco smoking is dangerous to health. Cardiovascular diseases, doctors say, kill more people than any other cause of death, and tobacco use and second-hand smoke exposure contribute to approximately 12 per cent of all heart disease deaths

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