The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr. Elias Sory, has stressed the need to galvanize efforts to help curb a tobacco epidemic before the situation gets out of hand.  He said preventing the problem and saving the younger ones from the epidemic is the best thing any country should aim at. 

Dr. Sory was speaking in Accra at a consultative meeting on the implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). He said it took Canada many years to get over the problem because the authorities ignored it initially. The meeting was to identify and document roadblocks to the FCTC’s implementation and international funding of tobacco control in Ghana and also establish mechanisms of continuous cooperation between Ghana and Canada to strengthen tobacco control in Ghana . 

A Focal Person on Tobacco Control Ghana , Mrs. Edith Wellington, said the control programme has made modest progress.  She said the next major achievement would be the passage of the Tobacco Control Bill, which is still pending in the Ministry awaiting cabinet consideration.

Mrs. Wellington said the Food and Drugs Board had designed a form that registered and kept records of all tobacco importers in the country and was required to sign a document to abide by directives, which reflected the key essentials of the FCTC.