Committee on Public Health hosts roundtable entitled Ukraine's Achievements And Problems In Field Of Tobacco Control
13 December 2016, 12:54
The participants in the roundtable were representatives of the Committee on Public Health, Interfactional Deputy Association for Prophylactics and Fight Against Non-Infectious Diseases, Health Ministry of Ukraine, World Health Organization, World Bank, Yaremenko Social Researches Institute of Ukraine and the Zhyttia [Life] non-government organization.
The participants in the meeting discussed the status of Ukraine's implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, presented information about a joint WHO - Health Ministry project on smoking cessation and considered legislative initiatives in the field of protection of Ukrainians' health from harmful impact of tobacco.
It was noted that thanks to previous legislative amendments that touched abolition of tobacco ads, limitation of smoking in public places and other steps, Ukraine managed to lower the spread of smoking among adult population from 37% in 2006 to 24% in 2015.
One of new legislative initiatives is the bill No. 2820 dated May 13, 2015 On Amendments To Some Laws Of Ukraine touching protection of population's health from harmful impact of tobacco, which offers to prohibit production and sale of flavored cigarettes, to enlarge the tobacco warning images on cigarette boxes and to ban selling e-cigarettes to minors.
The roundtable participants noted that all the suggested measures are based on scientifically proven facts, WHO recommendations, international and Ukrainian experience. Thus, imposition of these initiatives will allow Ukraine to lower the number of smoking people and thus, diseases as a result of smoking.