By Princess-Ekwi Ajide, Abuja
World Health Organization, WHO, has said that , 278 million (20%) of the nearly 828 million people facing hunger globally are in Africa, where 57.9 percent are suffering from moderate to severe food insecurity.
This, WHO, says, jeopardizes the region’s attainment of SDG 2 which aims to end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
In a message to mark the World No Tobacco Day, WHO’s Regional Director for Africa, Dr Matshidiso Moeti, lamented that while the number of people using tobacco products is decreasing in other parts of the world, it is rising in the Africa Region noting that the number of tobacco users in the WHO African Region increased from an estimated 64 million adult users in 2000 to 73 million in 2018.
The tobacco epidemic is one of the biggest public health challenges the world has ever faced, killing more than eight million people around the world every year; partly due to the increased production of tobacco products as well as aggressive marketing by the tobacco industry.
The World Health Organization, joins the rest of the international community to commemorate World No Tobacco Day every 31st May as an opportunity to highlight the dangers associated with tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke.
World No Tobacco day is also an occasion to renew advocacy for effective policies to halt the tobacco epidemic and its impact on individuals, societies, and nations.
The theme for this year, “Grow Food, Not Tobacco” aims to raise awareness about alternative crop production and marketing opportunities for tobacco farmers and encourage them to grow sustainable, nutritious crops.
It also seeks to expose the tobacco industry’s efforts to interfere with attempts to substitute tobacco growing with sustainable crops, thereby worsening the global food crisis and calls on all to explore how food and agricultural policies make adequate nutritious food and healthy diets available while reducing tobacco production.
Tobacco growing and production exacerbates nutrition and food insecurity as Tobacco farming destroys the ecosystems, depletes soil’s fertility, contaminates water bodies and pollutes the environment as such, any profits from tobacco as a cash crop may not offset the damage done to sustainable food production in low- and middle-income countries.
The Regional Director for Africa, expressed worries on the challenges imposed on food and nutrition security by the increasing tobacco farming in the Africa Region as available data shows that while the area under tobacco cultivation decreased by 15.7% globally, it increased in Africa by 3.4% from 2012 to 2018.
According to her, during the period, tobacco leaf production globally reduced by 13.9%; but increased by 10.6% in Africa, saying that in recent years, tobacco cultivation shifted to Africa because of a regulatory environment that is more favourable to the tobacco industry, as well as increasing demand for tobacco.
Dr. Moeti, stressed that WHO is working with Member States and other partners to assist farmers in shifting from tobacco growing to alternative crops through which it had in the last two years, assisted over 2000 tobacco farmers in Kenya turn to alternative crops resulting in improved food and nutrition security, increased income for farmers, healthier farming activities as well as environmental rehabilitation.
While encouraging governments to support tobacco farmers to switch to alternative crops by ending tobacco growing subsidies and using the savings for crop substitution programmes to improve food security and nutrition she noted the initiative which had started in Uganda and Zambia should be encouraged for all tobacco-growing countries in Africa.
