The Ministry of Health through the Department of Public Health and Professional Standards on Tuesday launched a three-day sensitisation workshop on Drug and Substance Abuse Control including tobacco control enforcement.
By bringing together six counties including Kirinyaga, Embu, Tharaka Nithi, Meru, Isiolo and Marsabit, the Ministry aims at sensitising key stakeholders on drug and substance abuse issues, raising public awareness about the impacts of drug and substance abuse and building the capacity of healthcare workers, Community Health Promoters, and enforcement officers.
Speaking during the event, Tobacco Control Board Chairperson Ms Naomi Shaban said they want to raise people’s awareness of laws regulating tobacco use as well as other drugs so they can help us fight it.
She said the idea to create awareness about tobacco use was born after several consultation forums when the board members and other stakeholders realised it is one of the substances that they need to fight.
“The law regulating tobacco use was formed in 2007 and 17 years later, many things have changed including devolution, as well as evolution in ways smoking is done. We therefore need to create awareness as part of the regulation with assistance from the county governments and also seek to ratify the act with the 2010 constitution for effectiveness,” said Ms Shaban.
She added that the old act focussed so much on cigarettes which has since evolved targeting children after they are through with their secondary school education.
“They have added things that attract the young people including perfumes and sweeteners and the way they are packaged you can’t think it’s a cigarette,” said Ms Shaban.
She said after they are through with sensitising people from the 10 clusters, they will get to the border points and sensitise those manning them on how to identify some of these items to eliminate the issue of smuggling them into the country.
“We are doing the second cluster in Meru and we have eight more to cover the entire country so that we don’t leave anyone behind,” said Ms Shaban.
Meru County Commissioner Jacob Ouma said he was happy to be involved in such a discussion considering that cigarettes have been a threat to the health of users and in some instances, non-users.
He said drug and substance abuse as well as smoking has also led to family breakups as well as young people becoming useless in society.
“It’s important to collaborate with the county government to sensitise leaders and later talk to the people so we can stand and say no to smoking as well as other types of drug abuse,” said Mr Ouma.
He said even though they have made some progress in fighting the drug abuse menace, this is not enough as they need to collaborate more to ensure they wipe out it in its entirety.
Head of Drug and Substance Abuse Control at the Ministry of Health Dr Andrew Toro said they decided to engage all stakeholders in the fight after realising that unless they have a multisectoral approach, they will not succeed.
During the first day, Dr Toro added, they were engaging key stakeholders who would later spread the message to other people, and on day two, they will be building capacity to health care workers to sensitise them on how to identify patients coming to hospitals who could be abusing these drugs.
“On the third day we will be partnering with the County government of Meru to have a public baraza where we will have a dialogue, and the people will tell us what is happening and we from the Ministry, the board and NACADA will take note, and also answer what we can because we want to unite with all Kenyans,” said Mr Toro.
He said the youth have been targeted by drug merchants and if stakeholders don’t take care, then they could lose generations.
“So, we are here to emphasise especially among the youth that they beware they have been targeted and so that we can protect our future generations,” said Dr Toro.
He said they were also collaborating with the Meru County Government to establish a treatment and rehabilitation centre for those addicted to these drugs.
He added: “We don’t want to leave patients hanging but to make them be seen so that they can be counselled, investigated, and initiate the process of recovery to have them make an economic impact on their country,”
Dr Toro added that tobacco prevalence in the country has gone down from 20 per cent to about nine per cent following the board’s interventions, but they are not celebrating because the merchants have changed tact and become more innovative in marketing including manufacturing of e-cigarettes.
“As a Ministry together with all stakeholders, we have a multi-agency enforcement team comprising Kenya Revenue Authority, Kenya Bureau of Standards, Pharmacy and Poisons Board, and the Ministry of Interior to ensure we have surveillance on our entry points so that we can bring down the prevalence,” said Dr Toro.
Meru University of Science and Technology Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Simon Thuranira who represented Vice-Chancellor Professor Romanus Odhiambo said the university is happy to host the workshop considering they have about 13,000 students and some of them are victims of drugs.
“We are also happy that the Ministry of Health as well as the County government are talking a language that we understand.”
“As a university, we have three mandates; training, research and community service. Therefore, with the Ministry of Health and the County government, we will conduct research on drug abuse to come up with more innovative ways to combat the menace,” said Professor Odhiambo.
In our discussion, he added, we also agreed that we would start short courses on drug abuse and also open up our health centre to the community.
He said they were also looking forward to upgrading the health centre to a level three hospital so that it can help the county government in serving people.
Meru County Executive Member in charge of Health Dr George Mungania said their government realised that whenever they have addiction patients in their hospitals including youths and their workers, they end up placing them in psychiatry wards since they don’t have facilities for them and that is how the idea of coming up with a rehabilitation centre which is halfway complete at the moment.
“We are hoping that our collaboration with the Ministry of Health will continue so that we can help our future generation.
By Dickson Mwiti