Sharmin Akter knows what she is hoping for on Valentine’s Day.

“I will tell my boyfriend to give up smoking as his Valentine gift to me. I will also tell my friends to do the same,” said Akter, a graduate of Eden College in Dhaka.

Ishita Rahman, an Eden College student, said, “let’s turn all the ashtrays at home into flower vases.”

They were among 200 female students at an anti-smoking seminar held at the city’s BIRDEM hospital. The event was organized by MANAS, a local NGO that promotes awareness among school and college students on the dangers of drug and tobacco addiction. MANAS is currently focusing on the adverse effects of smoking on women and children.

Guest speaker at the seminar was the country’s foreign minister, Dipu Moni. She reminded the gathering that in traditional, conservative Bangladesh society, smoking among women is still considered a serious social offence.

A woman may face a problem with her marriage prospects or face serious opposition from her in in-laws’ house if she smokes, she said.

She added that “the number of female tobacco smokers is rising in our society, which is unusual. There is a grave risk of having disabled children as a result of smoking tobacco.”

MANAS president Arup Ratan Chowdhury went into more detail on the potential effects of smoking on females and their offspring. “Out of the 4,000 chemicals that are found in a single cigarette, 60 are major contributors of cancer,” he said. “There are cases of women having disabled or stillborn children, either because they smoked or were affected by their husbands smoking.”

While the habit appears to be declining in affluent countries, it is on the rise in low and middle-income countries like Bangladesh. There are an estimated 10.5 million tobacco addicts nationwide and about one million people die each year from tobacco-related diseases. As in other parts of the world, smoking remains the nation’s number one cause of preventable deaths.

Apart from banning smoking in public places in 2005, the government has no specific activities to curb tobacco addiction.

Related Reports:

New Building Highlights Expanding Church Drug Treatment Service