With objectives to discourage advertisement related matters in the country, especially in sporting activities, The Gambia Alliance On Alcohol Policy renewed its calls for what it called ‘banning of advertising alcohol in sporting activities’ throughout the country.
Adding that advertisements of alcohol in sporting activities pose a great threat to the community, especially children and the future generation.
The alliance calls came hard on the heels of events marking celebrations of ‘World NO ALCOHOL DAY’ held on 3rd October 2018.
The Gambia Alliance seized the opportunity and called on government to take concrete steps towards achieving Sustainable Development Goals through imposition of a ban on advertisement of Alcohol in all sporting activities in The Gambia, which they said would serve as measure to avert children from the use of Alcohol.
For them, Its unfortunate that alcohol is one of the most heavily advertise products in the world and its advertisement contributes towards harmful drinking culture that exist in most part of the world, including The Gambia, which must be discourage at all cost
Alagie B Janneh is the National Coordinator of IOGT-Gambia and said the use of alcohol is responsible for 6.4% of all deaths and 4.7% of all Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALY) in the African region with a high social and economic cost to communities as a result of alcohol consumption.
He added that, Alcohol sponsorship of sporting activities has impacts on both players and spectators, saying it is also associated with hazardous drinking by many including players, children among others.
Mr Janneh made reference to a data released by The World Health Organisation on alcohol that its consumption results to 3.3million death annually through out the globe and as a casual factor in more than 200 diseases and other injury conditions. Noting that globally, the level of harm attributed to Alcohol use is close to Tobacco and this mainly affects young people leading to death and disability for males between the ages of 15 and 24.
Janneh said Alcohol consumption drags down development, through increased health care costs and decreased productivity, adding that Alcohol use also worsens health inequalities and exacerbates poverty, as poor people divert spending to Alcohol instead of essentials such as food, education and health-care.
The IOGT-Gambia Coordinator, reveals that there are clear global recommendations for effective action to combat the disease burden caused by alcohol, through the ban on Alcohol, restricted access to retailed alcohol and tax price measures among other methods.
Janneh urged the government to act and ban advertisement of alcohol in our sporting activities and gave assurance of his alliance to offer support in that direction
The Gambia Alliance on Alcohol Policy, Southern African on Alcohol Policy Alliance (SAAP) and East Africa on Alcohol Policy Alliance are synchronizing their efforts by calling on African governments to ban advertisement of Alcohol in Sporting activities and are hopeful of reducing the effect of alcohol use by vulnerable members of the society, especially young people.
Author: Kebba Ansu Manneh