Bangladesh goes up in cigarette pack warning rating

Bangladesh goes up in cigarette pack warning rating
Bangladesh has been witnessed a quantum leap in the world report on pictorial health warnings on the cigarette packs.

The Canadian Cancer Society report ranked Bangladesh in 57. The ranking was 110 in the last report in 2014 in Bangladesh.

The jump followed to the recent introduction of the pictorial health warnings covering 50 percent of the tobacco pack.

Nepal and Vanuatu jointly stood first in the ranking as both countries have been implemented graphical health warnings covering 90% space of the tobacco packets.

India and Thailand were rank third jointly, as usual, they have been implemented 85 percent pictorial warnings on the tobacco packets.

The report ranked 205 countries, with 152 of them implementing to the Health Warning (HW) on the tobacco packs. Besides, 105 of them have made Graphical Health Warning (GHW) implementation mandatory on the tobacco packets.

The anti-tobacco group Program said Bangladesh had stepped ahead in the terms of the overall scene but it yet had a long way to go compared with countries like Nepal, India, Thailand and Sri Lanka.

Bangladesh made graphic health warning implementation, like colored image and warning of damage caused by tobacco use, compulsory through covering 50% space of the tobacco packets since March 19 in 2016.

“However, the implementation scene remains largely poor,” Program said in the statement.

A recent study reveals that 75% of the tobacco packets come with no pictorial health warnings on of them.

Matthew Myers, President of the Washington-based Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said “remarkable” progress had been made around the global to ensure that the public was aware of the deadly truth about tobacco use – the world’s leading cause of the preventable death.

“More than half of the world’s population now sees warnings on the tobacco products that accurately portray to the deadly consequences of the tobacco use,” he said.

“Glossy images and appealing designs are being replaced by pictures of the diseased lungs or even plain, drab packaging in the more and more countries”.

“The report shows outstanding progress – and sends a strong message to countries around of the world that in the time to take strong action to the reduce tobacco’s deadly toll is now,” he said, commenting on the world report.