The First GATS Ethiopia Findings Released

The Ethiopian Public Health Institute (EPHI) in collaboration with the Ethiopian Food, Medicine, and Health Care Administration and Control Authority (FMHACA) released Ethiopian first Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS), a surveillance tool aimed at understanding tobacco use and trends in Ethiopia on October 31, 2017.
Dr. Tsigereda Kifle Deputy Director General of EPHI on her welcoming remark said that EPHI is hosting the dissemination workshop in collaboration with FMHACA, World Health Organization (WHO), Center for Disease Control (CDC) and CDC Foundation.
“This workshop is planned to provide evidence on Tobacco use and control for the audience that came from different government sector offices, research institutes, academia, development partners, media and others who are all significant for the national tobacco control program implementation in Ethiopia,” added the Deputy Director.
Yehulu Denekew General Director of FMHACA while addressing the participants also thanked EPHI for facilitating such an important workshop and bringing together all the concerned authorities.
“I would like to thank all those organization who contributed for the success of the survey. Also I appreciate the National Tobacco Control organizing committee for completing the Tobacco Control Strategic Plan which is presented today in addition to the survey findings. And also thank you the World Health Organization and Mathiwos Wondu YeEthiopia Cancer Society for their professional and financial support for the survey,” added General Director Yehulu.
On his part Dr. Paul Mainuka, on behalf of the World Health Organization Representative to Ethiopia on his key note address mentioned that the data produced by GATS will enable Ethiopia to have a clear understanding of the patterns of tobacco use distribution within the adult population, the level of knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions that influence tobacco use and the determinants that influences use.
According to Mr. Sisay Derso, principal investigator of the survey, the findings of the study indicates that tobacco use and its toll in Ethiopia are significant, with more than 3.4 million currently use tobacco products, overall, 3.2% of adults (2.2 million) smoked tobacco daily (5.2% among men and 1.1% among women), and 0.5% (350,000) smoked tobacco occasionally (0.9% among men and 0.1% among women). Among all adults, 2.7% (1.9 million) currently smoked manufactured cigarette. On average, current daily manufactured cigarette smokers smoked 10.3 cigarettes per day (10.8 cigarettes per day in urban areas and 10.1 cigarettes per day in rural areas) while 1.1 million of adults were current smokeless tobacco users in Ethiopia. The prevalence of current daily smokeless tobacco was 1.5% and for occasional smokeless tobacco use was 0.2%.