It’s about ten years since the government program “Against smoking” is operating in Armenia, according to which, the healthcare officials spending millions are fighting to protect the health of current and future generations from the consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke. Despite this, recently, the “Global Times” newspaper, citing the findings of the researches of 2012 “Journal of the American Medical Association”, stated Armenia is the third in the men’s smoking rate in the world, in other words, our country is ranked among the world’s most smoking countries. According to the same source, in 2012, 51.5 percent of men were smoking in Armenia, after Indonesia and East Timor, where the percentage ratio was 57 and 61, respectively. Aravot.am asked the Deputy Director of the National Institute of Health, Bazarchyan Alexander, who is also the coordinator of the program “Fight against smoking”, why the rate is so high. Mr. Bazarchyan assuring that the published figures are true, said that, however, similar “ratings” should not be taken seriously whether we are in the first place, second or the third. “Of course, it’s too bad that the indicator for men is 51%, and it’s really a high indicator, but that is not the issue, for example, the same prevalence among women with the same ratings is very low, however, we consider women smoking also a serious problem, now. I can not say what is the statistics in other countries, since I have not seen the preliminary scientific report of this research, I have not read the 2012 report of which country, and which numbers they have calculated, as it is clear that the research was not conducted across the world, and they have taken the data received from the countries, analyzed and published them in some form of a list by who and how much smokes, and so on. As for the 51%, ten years ago the consumption of tobacco among men was about 60 percent, therefore, there is somewhat positive tendency, according to the same statistics published by them, of course, it could have been better, for example 40 %. In fact, I strongly doubt that there are no countries but only 3-4 countries, in which the smokers make more than 50%, since different studies show different things. Both in Russia and the Soviet Union, the picture is roughly the same in all places, therefore, it is a sort of behavior that is typical to the Soviet Union countries, and as a result of similar epidemiological picture of tobacco in our region.” As presented by Alexander Bazarchyan, there are countries where the smoking rate is low due to religious affiliation. Note that the “Armenia Youth Foundation”, under healthy lifestyle program, implements also an anti-tobacco programs. To our question of how much money was spent for tobacco control in 2012, they answered that the money is allocated for a healthy lifestyle, and there is no separate data on specific anti-tobacco programs. We learned that in 2012-2013, the Foundation has implemented three projects.
Lusine BUDAGHYAN
