The Sunday News
Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent—
ZIMBABWE has recorded an upsurge in drug and tobacco abuse by school pupils with 20 percent of pupils below the age of 15 already smoking, the Ministry of Health and Child Care has revealed. A Global Youth Tobacco Survey carried out from 2014 to last year by the Ministry of Health and Child Care in conjunction with the Primary and Secondary Education ministry, discovered that 12 percent of pupils smoking tobacco started smoking at the age of seven or below.
Ministry of Health and Child Care director responsible for Mental Health, Tobacco, Drug and Alcohol Abuse Mrs Dorcas Sithole, who was the research co-ordinator, said the survey revealed that 22 percent of boys were using tobacco products compared to 15,8 percent of girls.
“In Zimbabwe the Global Youth Tobacco Survey was conducted in 2014 by Ministry of Health and Child Care. The overall response rate was 70,4 percent. A total of 6 427 eligible students in Grade Seven and Forms One to Three completed the survey of which 5 114 were aged 13 to 15 years. About 20 percent of the students have used tobacco products and 22 percent of boys have used tobacco while 15,8 percent of girls have used tobacco products. It was also discovered that 16,2 percent of the students have smoked tobacco while 12,4 percent of every cigarette smokers first tried cigarette at the age of seven years or younger,” she said.
Mrs Sithole said there was an alarming increase in drug abuse by school pupils as well as young adults due to the adoption of the multicurrency system.
“We have heard reports from people, doctors and parents of the drastic increase of drug abuse by juveniles. We are still collecting data on drug abuse and we hope by end of February we would have statistics on drug abuse. These, however, are obtained from mental health and rehabilitation centres as well as hospitals and other walk-in clients,” she said.
Global Youth Tobacco Survey, a component of the Global Tobacco Surveillance System, is a global standard for systematically monitoring youth tobacco use and tracking key tobacco control indicators.
Global Youth Tobacco Survey is nationally representative school based survey of students in grades associated with 13 to 15 years of age and is designed to produce cross sectional estimates for each country. It uses a standard core questionnaire, sample design and data collection protocol.
It assists countries in fulfilling their obligations under the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to generate comparable data within and across countries. Among young people, the short-term health consequences of smoking include respiratory and non-respiratory effects, addiction to nicotine, and the associated risk of other drug use. Long-term health consequences of youth smoking are reinforced by the fact that most young people who smoke regularly continue to smoke throughout adulthood.
