Tanzania:  Alarm as "Shisha" Smoking Takes Urban Dar es Salaam by Storm  

Source from:  TSN Daily News(tz)  07/01/2013

A NEW 'fashionable' trend of Shisha smoking among the youth especially young girls in Dar es Salaam is proving to be a concern.

The Head of the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Unit in the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Norman Sabuni told the 'Sunday News' in an exclusive interview that there was need for the nation to be worried.

"What a lot of these youths don't know is that shisha is just like any other tobacco and it has nicotine and through passive smoking, it injures both the smoker and those around them," he said.

Areas in Dar es Salaam where many youths flock to for their shisha smoking include Sinza Makaburini, Mikocheni and nearly all big hotels. Shisha (sheesha) is an Egyptian term for a water pipe (hookah) with a long flexible tube connected to a container.

Fruit flavoured tobacco is burnt on top of the container with lit charcoal and users suck through the hose to bring the flavoured smoke down into the container, through the water and into the hose. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), analyses have reached to the point that shisha is far more dangerous than smoking cigarettes or pipe smoking.

One is getting more smoke from the shisha than when smoking a cigarette stick. Inhaling the smoke from the hubblebubble is like inhaling toxic gases and in the lungs. Some germs, mainly bacteria that cause tuberculosis, live in the shisha pipe.

Dr Sabuni said that as per the current trends, for a bar to appear fashionable today, it has to have a shisha parlour and thus the reason why they are mushrooming all over Dar es Salaam and other urban regions. "We are extremely concerned because for starters, shisha smoking can be very addictive and this means that addicts are being produced while very young," he said.

Dr Sabuni said that the ministry through the National Tobacco Control Strategy, would continue to inform the public on the health hazards of shisha smoking particularly among the youth. He said that in Dar es Salaam, a number of people had been trained to help people wanting to quit smoking and the efforts to train other health practitioners countrywide were underway.

Martha James (not real name) openly admitted that she is fast becoming a shisha addict and that her weekend isn't fulfilled if she doesn't smoke it. "I often ask myself how I started smoking shisha, I detest cigarettes smoke with a passion.

Most of my friends smoke shisha, just like owning a smartphone today, you have to smoke shisha if you want to stand out in the crowd," she said. The WHO Collaborating Centre for Primary Oral Health Care, Planning and Research Director at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences, Dr Emeria Mwanga, said that as a parent with teenage children, there was every reason for concern. "Personally I think there is something in shisha that authorities are not saying.

I have seen kids come into a parlour very normal and after a couple of puffs their eyes become droopy and they get hyperactive," she said. Dr Mwanga said from the oral health perspective, tobacco causes a number of cancers and it saddened her that thousands of youths were being deceived with mere flavours.

The Tanzania Tobacco Control Forum (TTCF) Director, Ms Lutgard Kagaruki said that there was dire need to ban all shisha parlours because they were a threat to thousands of people especially the youth. Enditem