Today May 31st is World No Tobacco Day, and an awareness campaign is being conducted today and tomorrow at different health centers throughout the country. This year the theme is "Tobacco Industry Interference", and Tyronne Chimilio explained why the theme was chosen and what activities will be conducted during the campaign. We caught up with him at the NDACC, where he showed us an educational video that was created for World No Tobacco Day. Here is an excerpt from the video:
Tyronne Chimilio, District Coordinator - NDACC
"The excerpts that I have shown you - that is geared towards entertainment which is entertainment along with education and we had members from the Youth Advocacy Movement which is the youth arm of the Belize Family Life Association. The escape is informing one of their friends of tobacco smoking in preventing him even from start to smoke cigarettes."
Robin Schaffer
"Can you explain the theme for me?"
Tyronne Chimilio, District Coordinator - NDACC
"The theme is geared towards the publicizing of cigarette tobacco smoking and its dangerous to the health and is part of the things that we want to continue to emphasize to the public that tobacco smoking is bad for the health. So it's a competition that is basically taking place with us convincing people not to smoke, against the tobacco which is emphasizing the sale of their products."
"World No Tobacco Day is celebrated on the 31st of May, It's an annual event and its gears towards highlighting the negative effects of tobacco smoking and as best as possible to raise awareness and to as well have effective programs to reduce the consumption of tobacco use."
"Yes, people will smoke, but one of the things about it is that we are not here to just go and hammer it in peoples head and say don't smoke. The main objective of the entire day is to highlight the awareness of the negative effects of smoking. At the end of the day you have a choice, if you want to live a longer and healthier life then I wouldn't suggest for you to be smoking."
"Nationally, we have poster competition, we have poetry competition, we have song competition all gear towards No World Tobacco Day but specifically we have activities taking place in the cayes which is a first along with the Ministry of Health and HECOPAB doing fairs and plus a tobacco act."
The campaign will continue tomorrow at various health centers throughout the country including Punta Gorda, Dangriga, Orange Walk Town, and Corozal Town. Caye Caulker village will also participate tomorrow with a health fair at the Central Park.
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