Teachers urged to raise awareness against tobacco products

Speakers at an event urged the teachers to use their capacity and position to raise awareness on the negative effects of tobacco products, which are harmful to human health, environment and economy.

Teachers have a great scope to create awareness among people, particularly among students in educational institutions, about the risks related to the use of tobacco products, they said.

The government has set a target to make Bangladesh tobacco free by 2040 considering the extent of tobacco menace to public health, the economy and environment. If the teachers constantly play their awareness raising role, it would help achieve the target, they observed.

They made these remarks while addressing a training workshop titled ‘The harmful effects of smoking and tobacco products and its prevention’ at Meghna Hall Room of BIAM Foundation at New Eskaton in the capital.

Bangladesh Blind Mission (BBM), an NGO working on health and disability issues, organized the event on Monday.

The participants at the workshop gave various recommendations to combat tobacco.

The recommendations are:

> Prohibiting smoking in the open spaces

> Ensuring proper application of rules and regulations regarding production, buying and sale of tobacco products

> Counselling with family members to aware them of the dangers of smoking; introducing reward system to encourage smoking cessation

> Imposing high tax on tobacco products

> Raising awareness among the people

Juel Ahmed, president of BBM, presided over the workshop while Brigadier General (retd) Khondoker Mohammad Mozammel Haque, advisor of BBM, was present as a special guest.

Shuvashish Mahanta, nationally renowned development consultant, and Shamsal Islam, epidemiologist of Ispahani Eye Institute and Hospital, jointly conducted the training.

About 25 teachers from various educational institutions in the capital participated in the workshop.

They pledged to play their role to create awareness on tobacco.

Citing data of 2022 of World Health Organization (WHO), the event was told that smoking is prevalent among 28.6% adult people in Bangladesh.

Among the people, 47.7% is males and 8.7% is females. According to a data of 2021, about 1.60 lakh people die of smoking-related diseases in Bangladesh every year.