Transcript
WENDY SNOWDON: It's very much about supporting the country to deliver against that plan and making sure that the respective organisations that can provide support to the Ministry if needed are available to do that. So the plan will be agreed for what needs to occur in the next five years and then the stakeholders will discuss about what extra support might be needed and then the progress will be monitored on an annual basis.
JENNY MEYER: So given that there've been tobacco measures in place for quite a while now, what can people expect to see that's different in their community around the prevention of harm from smoking?
WS: I think what we're looking to achieve really is a de-normalisation of tobacco smoking, where to see somebody smoking is the exception, is not the norm, and where the community accepts that it's something that needs to be discouraged and where you don't see people routinely smoking in public places. They've already tightened the controls on smoking in public places and workplaces but that also needs to extend to the wider communities as well. So it's very much a grass roots movement as well as a top down measure.
JM: And I've heard that children and teenagers are going to be targeted so will there be some sort of like education in schools, that kind of thing?
WS: For the next five years the Samoa team has identified that they want to prioritise protecting children and so yes they'll be looking at working with Education Ministry and communities to make sure that children are protected from second hand smoke but also protected from hopefully taking up the behaviour as well.
JM: And I guess that the consequences of smoking over the life time are really quite horrendous in terms of health outcomes, do you hope that this will be a cost effective way to tackle some of those health blow-outs that we see around the Pacific?
WS: Absolutely I mean globally the use of tobacco and exposure to second hand smoke is the biggest single risk factor for non communicable diseases. So it's certainly something that we have to really ensure that there's focus on and that we act on. The good thing about what's happening is that we know that the effects will be seen in a relatively short time frame. Because we know that if somebody's a smoker now and they stop smoking that their risk starts to reduce every year. So they start to move back towards the risk level if they hadn't been a smoker. So first year the risk drops, the second year the risk drops again and so on. So the sooner we can get the actions in place to help people quit if they're smoking now or to reduce their consumption and of course to avoid future smokers, is really going to be quite influential in reducing the health burden.
