IPH Representation in South Asia Regional Consortium, SARC

by iphindia | Aug 21, 2020 | Blog, Chronic Health Conditions, Latest Updates

Dr. Upendra Bhojani was invited to be a member of a Technical Advisory Panel for the South Asian Regional Consortium Centre for Combating Tobacco (SARC-CCT), Colombo. Other members of the Technical Advisory Panel include Dr. Rana J Singh, Prof. Stella Bialous, Dr. Tara Singh Bam and Dr. Mary Assunta.

The SARC-CCT Technical Advisory Panel represents the regional and international experts who work in the tobacco control field, who are able to help advise and offer guidance to the SARC-CCT. This consortium has representatives from the South Asian states, including Afghanistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, India & Sri Lanka. The consortium was first set up and inaugurated in July 2019 as a tobacco observatory, the main purpose of which is to monitor tobacco industry activities and implementation of FCTC Article 5.3 in the region of South Asia. The first meeting of the consortium was held on 30th July 2020 and is scheduled to occur once in three months. 

Consultancy project with the State Anti-Tobacco Cell, Gov of Karnataka

by iphindia | Aug 1, 2020 | Blog, Chronic Health Conditions, Latest Updates

In a project commissioned by the State Anti-Tobacco Cell (Dept Health and Family Welfare Services, GOK), Riddhi and Upendra, researchers at the DEEP project at IPH, with the help of intern Neema Joseph, historically mapped and analyzed various tobacco-related litigations in Karnataka high court in order to identify the stakeholders as well as common laws/arguments used by these stakeholders in shaping tobacco regulations in Karnataka. The project sought to answer two main questions:

1.     What have been the legislations and major arguments used by petitioners in litigations challenging tobacco control regulations in Karnataka?

2.     Who have been the stakeholders engaged directly in litigations related to tobacco in Karnataka?

Upon completion of the study, we presented this work to members of the Tobacco Control Alliance in a meeting organized by the department on 26th July 2020 and later submitted a report of the study physically to the Deputy Director, Dr. Selvaraj who also leads the tobacco control initiative. We discussed a possible follow-up to the study, centred around convening of lawyers and select petitioners, and studying a few key litigations in Karnataka. We believe such insights can help the state government pre-empt legal challenges as well as develop an effective stakeholder-specific response to legal challenges. The team hopes to write and publish a paper based on this work.

Download the Report – Here

National Summit on Tobacco or Health – 2020

by iphindia | Jul 13, 2020 | Blog, Chronic Health Conditions, Latest Updates

On May 29th, 2020 the National Summit was held virtually, the main theme was on “Protecting youth from industry manipulation and preventing them from tobacco and nicotine use” , and organised “by Resource Centre for Tobacco Control (E-RCTC), PGIMER Chandigarh in collaboration with Strategic Institute of Public Health Education and Research (SIPHER), Chandigarh and The Union South-East Asia (The Union).” The summit (schedule accessible here) was intended to train public health professionals and tobacco control practitioners on the ways in which the tobacco industry seeks to influence the youth; and the strategies and tactics that can be applied to keep the tobacco industry in check. 

Dr. Upendra Bhojani was invited to be a participant in the plenary session on the above theme at the Summit and the recording can be accessed here.