calls on govt not to accept donations from tobacco companies

By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA-A Civil Society Organisation, African Tobacco Control Alliance, ATCA, Monday, urged Nigerians to abstain from cigarette smoking over Coronavirus, COVID-19 complications.
This was made known by the Chairperson, Board of Directors, Akinbode Oluwafemi, ATCA, in an interview with Vanguard, while speaking on the need for government to ban the sale of cigarette during this period of lockdown as done by other countries who are signatory like Nigeria to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).

According to Oluwafemi the danger between COVID-19 and smoking highly puts those who smoke into grave COVID-19 complications, which mostly turns out to be fatal, because according to reports most people who died in other parts of the world from contracting COVID-19 were smokers.

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He said: “We have escalated our campaign. Thank goodness that some of the COVID-19 survivors have come to say look this is the best time for you to stay away from smoking and you don’t have any reason to stay away from smoking COVID-19 is one more reason for people to stay away from smoking.

“So we are now telling people the danger between COVID-19 and smoking because if you are a smoker and you contract COVID-19 your case is going to get gradually complicated or fatal that is why some governments around the world banned the sale of tobacco during the lockdown.”

He further stated that his organization has been on various social media handles sensitizing people over the high risk of contracting the virus via smoking.

“Particularly these days we are using more social media to reach people as most people are at home-facebook, twitter. We have used FacebookLive where we brought the Lagos State Chairman of Nigeria Medical Association to educate people about the linkages between smoking and COVID-19.

“We are still going to do a major one in about two week’s time. People originally thought there was something in tobacco that would help with COVID-19 which was a lie. It was a myth, lies and probably was syndicated by the Tobacco Company. We have to tell the truth and make our people know that it is merely the opposite.”

Meanwhile, he also highlighted some dangers inherent in smoking this period, “What is very clear is smoking affects the lungs, there is no debate about that. COVID-19 affects the lungs, now your first line of defence is your immunity by the time COVID-19 is contracted, and those are very established truth.

“So when a smoker whose lungs are already compromised contract COVID-19 is most likely to develop fatal complications, hospitalization, and the rest of them. So that also has been reinforced by scientific study.

“In fact, there is a study that was done in China that has shown that people who use to smoke recorded more fatality when they had COVID-19 than those who don’t smoke.

“The process of contracting it itself in which case there is repeated activity of the hand going to the mouth and it is the same thing as contracting COVID-19 by the hand going to the mouth.

“So these are things that have been documented that we need to let our people know that smoking during this period is extremely dangerous”, he stated.

However, the ATCA boss called on federal and state governments not to accept any form of a donation from tobacco companies as it flaunts the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which Nigeria is a signatory to and had ratified it.

“Now, the Nigerian Government is a signatory to a convention called Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is very clear that Nigeria is a signatory and party to it, signed and ratified it.

“That global convention prohibits government going into partnership with Tobacco Company either as corporate social responsibility or for these donations because it has been proven that each time they do that they want to use it to compromise public health. It is the World Health Organisation, WHO, global convention.

“So if you are one of the biggest problems you can’t be hypocritical saying you want to distribute sanitizers and then you are commending your staff to keep the production line going whereas in South Africa they completely ban the sale of cigarettes during the lockdown”, he said.