The Renevlyn Development Initiative, RDI, has emphasized the importance of using credible data in producing tobacco control stories at a training of journalists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, over the weekend.
The journalists numbering 20 who were mainly from the print, electronic and online genre were trained on how to access and navigate the pool of rich information warehoused in the Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) developed by the Development Gateway.
The training had prominent tobacco control experts including Professor Patrick Shamba – Technical Advisor, TCDI Program, DRC, Caleb Ayong – founder Vital Voices for Africa (VVA), Achieng Otieno – founder, Being Africa, Oluchi Joy Robert – a UK-based tobacco control expert and Philip Jakpor, executive director of RDI, the convening organisation.
Executive Director of RDI, Philip Jakpor said that in conceiving the training, RDI realized that the media is key not only in keeping the public informed as part of its watchdog role, but also in eliciting robust discourse that ultimately translates into policy responses and actions.
Jakpor said that the indispensability of the media to tobacco control is exemplified in the amount of money that the tobacco industry expends annually to market its products using media channels.
According to him, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S recently revealed that in that country alone the amount that the tobacco industry spent on visibility activities including cigarette advertising and promotion increased from $7.84 billion in 2020 to $8.06 billion in 2021. In 2022 the expenditure was $8.3 billion.
He revealed that tobacco companies have also been linked to social media influencers who covertly promote tobacco products, using subtle company campaigns, reinforcing the importance of the media in the battle of lungs.
He went on to say that, in the DRC just like other countries on the continent, smoking is a major public health problem with significant impact on morbidity and mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
He lamented however that tobacco control in the DRC hardly makes the news, even as he added that the journalists must be knowledgeable enough on the subject for them to be able to convince policy makers who rely on what they read or hear or watch to be able to make laws that are rooted in facts.
In his intervention, Professor Patrick Shamba, Technical Advisor, TCDI Programme in DRC, explained that smoking is a major public health problem in the DRC with significant impact on morbidity and mortality from non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
The presentation titled Current state of tobacco control in the Democratic Republic of Congo exposed the fact that tobacco control in the DRC is hampered by lack of specific regulatory measures,
lack of detailed provisions for the effective implementation of the 2018 framework law, tobacco industry interference, illicit trade in tobacco products, and difficulties in controlling and regulating the parallel market.
