World No Tobacco Day in Georgia

World No Tobacco Day is celebrated around the world yearly on May 31. It aims to inform population about the risks of tobacco consumption and tobacco companies’ harmful measures, furthermore regarding the actions what WHO is doing to fight the tobacco epidemic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) selects "Gender and tobacco with an emphasis on marketing to women" as the theme for the World No Tobacco this year.
To celebrate this day Tobacco Control Alliance in Georgia jointly with the Tbilisi State University organized special event, which took place at administrative building of the University. Namely, the exhibition of banners with health warning pictograms has opened that are in action in many other countries. Along these banners, pupils of several schools have presented different paintings and posters about the smoking hazards.
Event was attended by the TSU Rector Giorgi Khubua, Vice-speaker of Parliament - Giorgi Tsereteli, Head of the Health Care and Social Issues Committee of Parliament – Otar Toidze, Deputy Minister of Health – Manana Jebashvili, Deputy Minister of Education – Irina Qurdadze, Presidents of Oncology Center and Respiratory Association. Their speeches were almost identical regarding the tobacco harm and necessity to fight against smoking.
Head of Tobacco Control Alliance in Georgia - George Bakhturidze briefly gave a talk about the activities The Alliance had been implementing in Georgia in order to improve tobacco control system. The emphasis was made on marketing strategies to women, that tobacco companies are using in Georgia to attract new consumers. An alarming statistics was presented regarding the catastrophically increasing number among women smokers in Georgia. Smoking prevalence among the girls has increased 2,5 times during last 5 years. Accordingly, the number of still-born babies and freak-born babies has increased considerably. Such horrifying situation is caused from an aggressive advertisement policy of the tobacco companies.
Furthermore, Tobacco Control Alliance awarded the winner smoke-free schools with the special Diplomas for their accomplishments in the area of tobacco free environment. Only six schools have won such status this year (Italian school “Tsiskari”, school “Sarkmeli”, N136, N158, N64 and N26 public schools). That’s too small amount of schools and it essential to improve the implementation of the legislation in order to make all medical and educational institutions really smoke-free.
Mass Media broadcasted about the event. The exhibition will last one more week and it’s hoping many students will make choice on behalf of healthy life style and it will remind the policy makers once again that banning of all kind of tobacco product advertizing is necessary.