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Tobacco smoke – a major burden on health sector – Chronic Diseases Coordinator
Dr. Kavita Singh, Coordinator of Non Communicable Diseases
Health care offered by the public health sector in Guyana is free. As a consequence, there is virtually nowhere that the public health sector has been helping to contribute to the economy.
This state of affairs was amplified on Tuesday by Chronic Diseases Coordinator within the Public Health Ministry, Dr. Kavita Singh.
She underscored that the impact of tobacco smoke has proven to be a major burden for the health sector. Tobacco has been a major contributor to chronic non-communicable diseases [NCDs] for which the Public Health Ministry has been battling to control its impact.
NCDs, according to Singh, account for 70 percent of the country’s premature mortality. Premature, she explains, is the death of persons before the age of 70. “That means that a lot of us will not live to that fruitful, ripe age of 70; seeing our grandchildren, or great grandchildren run around because NCDs kill us before we get to that age,” Dr. Singh considered.
This is compounded by an already shortened life expectancy age which is 63 for males and 67 for females.
“There are a lot of factors that are striking at our premature mortality but at the end of it, it is usually NCDs accounting for 70 percent of all those who die before the age of 70,” asserted the Chronic Diseases Coordinator.
Tobacco use, according to her, is highly correlated with cancers–lung cancer being the fifth leading cause of cancer in Guyana.
Lung cancer, she noted, accounts for 10 percent of all cancers that are recorded annually. But according to Dr. Singh, “Our health care system does have a major gap whereby we only have one public institution that offers a sparse amount of care as it relates to Oncology and that is the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
“Anything out of that is usually private and it’s as a result that we do not have comprehensive cancer prevention and control plan. So tobacco use already again adds to the existing huge burden.”
Tobacco, Dr. Singh amplified, is deemed the single legal cause of death, worldwide. To arrest this glaring impact the Public Health Sector is looking to Tobacco Control legislation which was tabled last month in the National Assembly.
Such legislation will not deny persons the privilege of smoking but rather, put measures in place to protect those who do not wish to smoke and could be exposed to second-hand smoke. The danger of tobacco smoke exists in the fact that it contains more than 250 carcinogens. Carcinogens are those substances or compounds that have cancerous side effects on human beings, Dr. Singh said.
She pointed out that the International Association for the Regulation of Cancer and the Environmental Protection Agency have deemed second-hand smoke as a human carcinogen. “It is also found that there is no level of second-hand smoke that can be established to be not harmful. So the slightest disposition of second-hand smoke is known to be harmful to humans,” Dr. Singh added.
Among the dangers of second hand smoke are acute respiratory diseases, bronchitis and pneumonia, asthma and middle ear infections, inhibits lung function, low birth-weight babies, premature birth, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS, or crib death), cancer of the lung and oral/nasal cavity, breast cancer in young, primarily pre-menopausal women, heart disease and heart attacks and causes and exacerbates asthma and COPD.
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