Over 1.30 crore women in Bangladesh — more than men — consume different types of smokeless tobacco that causes various diseases, particularly oral cancer.
Smokeless tobaccos include ‘gul’, ‘jarda’ and ‘sada pata’ (powdered or dried tobacco leafs).
Around 1.40 crore women in Bangladesh consume tobacco through smoking or in smokeless form. Of them 7-7.5 lakh women are smokers.
The statistics were revealed at a three-day training course for journalists on ‘Media for Tobacco Control in Bangladesh’ at the Press Ins-titute of Bangladesh Friday.
In the definition given on tobacco in the existing Tobacco Control Law, smokeless tobaccos like ‘gul’, ‘jarda’ and ‘sada pata’ have not been mentioned. It is one of the major weaknesses of the law.
The training course was jointly organised by PIB and Progga (Knowledge for Prog-ress), a research organisation.
The PIB director general, Dulal Chandra Biswas, inaugurated the training course, participated by journalists representing different dailies, news agencies and TV channels.
Taifur Rahman of ‘Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids’, Syed Mahbubul Alam of Work for a Better Bangla-desh Trust delivered lectures on ‘Tobacco Control in Glo-bal and Bangladesh contexts’ and ‘Tobacco Control Law in Bangladesh’ respectively at two working sessions.
Progga executive director Syed Badrul Karim moderated the sessions.
Taifur Rahman said about 4.13 crore people in Bangladesh consumed tobacco through smoking or in smokeless forms. Some 57,000 people die each year due to tobacco-related diseases in the country.
Referring to ‘Global Adult Tobacco Survey’, conducted in 2009 by the health ministry, he said the rate of tobacco consumption has incre-ased 7.5 per cent over 2004.
At the training sessions, some achievements of the Smoking and Tobacco Products Consumption (Control) Act 2005 were mentioned. These include no TV advertisement for tobacco, no smoking inside city bus services and inter-district bus services, almost no smoking in public places, and no-smoking signs on transports particularly water transports.
