TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Ministry of Health has revealed a shocking finding. During the Focus Group Discussion held by the National Committee of Human Rights, Tjandra Yoga Aditama from the Ministry said that more than 60 million Indonesian are smokers, in which around 60 percent of them are men and 4.5 percent are women.
Tjandra also explained that the number of children and teenagers who smoke is on the rise and there are now 97 millions passive smokers in Indonesia, with 43 millions of them being children. "The country's macro spending due to smoking is bigger than the tobacco excise we received," he said, adding that every year, the country spends Rp 254,41 trillion (for curing tobacco-related diseases), while the country's revenue from the tobacco excise is only Rp 55 trillion.
The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is part of the World Health Organization's agenda, was the first international convention to regulate public health. According to Tjandra, FCTC is an agreement at a world level and has been accepted by members of the WHO in 2003.
There are 176 countries that have taken part in the FCTC. Meanwhile, there are still nine countries that have neither signed nor ratify the FCTC; they are Indonesia, Andorra, Dominica, Eritrea, Liechtenstein, Malawi, Somalia, Tajikistan and Zimbabwe. Yoga further said that FCTC's aim is to formulate a global agenda for tobacco regulations in an effort to reduce the number of smokers throughout the world.
HADRIANI P
