A Draft legislation intended to ban smoking in public places and promote other tobacco control measures, will be presented to Cabinet by Friday, Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, the Minister of Health, has disclosed.

After Cabinet consideration, the draft anti-smoking legislation is expected to be presented to Parliament for further review before becoming law. 

The bill has been on the shelves of the Ministry of Health since 2005 and there are fears among some health officials that it may continue to stall in the legislative process.

Mrs Edith Wellington, the Principle Health Research Officer at the Ghana Health Service (GHS), who is currently spearheading the Focal Point for Tobacco Control, told the Daily Graphic that the bill might pass quicker if more priority and resources were given to tobacco control.

According to Mrs Wellington, the Ministry of Health did not list tobacco control on its priority issues agenda and was therefore not given an aligned budget.

Diseases such as Malaria, TB, HIV and AIDS are ranked among the top priorities of the Ministry of Health.

She also said the Tobacco Control Department of the GHS occasionally received funding from the Ministry of Health for various public awareness programmes but did not receive nearly as much funding as other programmes listed as priorities of the Ministry of Health.

Ms Sophia Twum-Barima, National Professional Officer in charge of Health Promotion at the World Health Organisation (WHO) Ghana country office, also expressed concern over how long the bill had taken to reach Parliament, but said she was hopeful that the new administration offered hope.

"I think the new Minister of Health has given us greater hope than we had before," said Ms Twum-Barima.

She also said passing the bill would benefit the health of the nation, particularly non-smokers.

While smokers in Ghana remain a small minority in comparison to the total population, the threat of second-hand smoke to non-smokers remains a concern to tobacco control advocates in Ghana and the WHO.

"Why should we allow the few people to kill the rest of us?"  Ms Twum-Barima asked.

If the bill is passed, tobacco control measures outlined in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), will be [incorporated] into Ghanaian law.

The FCTC was created as an international treaty by 168 countries, including Ghana, at the WHO's tobacco control conference in Geneva on June 20, 2003, and currently serves as an international treaty for WHO party countries who have decided to ratify the framework in their own countries.

Once a member country has ratified the treaty, they are given a deadline to implement and incorporate specific tobacco control measures into their laws.

Ghana was among the initial 40 countries to sign and ratify the treaty. In 2004 the Ghanaian WHO party brought the treaty home from the Geneva convention, and ratified the FCTC on November 29 of that year.


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