Only a few weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report on the status of alcohol taking, local experts have expressed concern on the rising number of teenagers indulging in drinking.
They say unless measures are taken to address the problem, including sensitizing youth on the effects of drunkenness, there is a danger of generating a nation whose people would be less productive, though breweries are sure to generate massive incomes.
Dr Naftali Ng’ondi, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Social Work in Dar es Salaam, raised a warning signal saying that serious alcohol use among youth has significant neurological consequences.
Dr Ng’ondi, an experienced social worker, said that alcohol damages sensitive areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory, a health effect with ominous implications for teenagers.
“Consumption of alcohol at teenage age weakens the central parts of the brain, thus fades ability to think and decide what is right in a way that is right,” he said.
He explained to the Guardian on Sunday in a telephone interview that verbal skills and visual-spatial cognition diagnosticians often find that these skills in adolescents who drink are deficient in comparison to the non drinking youths.
Dr N’gondi, also the chairman of the Tanzania Emerging Schools of Social Work said that at schools and colleges, alcohol problems are tied to lower grades, poor attendance and increased dropout rates.
In the same interview, Social Work Institute senior lecturer Dr Zena Mnasi said drinking alcohol among the youths is also associated with the risk of developing health problems such as mental and behavioural disorders, including alcohol dependence.
The practice is tied to major non-communicable diseases such as liver cirrhosis, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases, injuries resulting from violence and road crashes.
Dr Mnasi also said the latest causal relationships demonstrated are those between alcohol consumption and incidence of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis as well as HIV/AIDS.
Expectant mothers who drink may trigger foetal alcohol syndrome and pre-term birth complications, she said, warning that parents should refrain from taking children to bars and restaurants selling alcohol. It is attributable to developing indecent culture/behaviour among the children, and finally the entire society.
Ms Sipha Shaaban, a social work lecturer at the Open University of Tanzania said that sexually transmitted diseases among alcohol consuming youths is high compared to the non-alcohol taking group.
She said alcohol taking adolescents are psychologically pretentious and easily become violent and some even commit suicide. “In a few years, HIV is going to leave the older generation and go to the youth,” the lecturer projected.
“The problem is not only alcoholism but also mental health problems and many other social disorders including formation of criminal gangs, prostitution, drug abuse, unsafe sex practices and early pregnancies, the problem of child mothers among others,” she asserted.
Zanzibar University social worker Mussa Said said adolescent alcoholism contributes immensely the growing problem of street children and criminal gangs which in turn becomes a burden to the society.
“Teens are the potential human resource of any nation in the world, but if there would be no tough laws prohibiting youths from indulging in taking alcohol, we should expect a nation without sustainable human resource and culturally ill adapted society,” he said.
Youths taking alcohol tend to develop sadness and loneliness which is a mental health problem, while fatal injuries attributable to alcohol consumption tend to occur in relatively younger age groups. This in turn affects the country’s social and economic make up, he said.
The scholars also warned that teenagers who are expectant mothers suffer due to taking alcohol during pregnancy, as this is the leading known cause of birth defects.
The amount of alcohol required to cause fetal alcohol syndrome (a group of signs and symptoms is unknown, thus pregnant women, even when not teenagers, are advised to abstain from drinking alcohol.
“The risk of miscarriage almost doubles for women who drink alcohol in any form during pregnancy, especially if they drink heavily. Often, the birth weight of babies born to women who drink during pregnancy is substantially below normal (less than 2.5 kilogrammes),” the Isles social worker underlined.
On the Mainland alcohol is sold in bars, hotels, restaurants, supermarkets and any street kiosks especially for hard liquor packets with no restrictions unlike in Zanzibar, where large resorts sell alcohol while most small restaurants offer no liquor.
The legal drinking age is the age at which a person can consume or purchase alcoholic food or alcoholic beverages. These laws cover a wide range of issues and behaviours, addressing when and where alcohol can be consumed.
The minimum age alcohol can be legally consumed in Tanzania is 18, but the laws vary among different countries and many laws have exemptions or special circumstances.
Most laws apply only to drinking alcohol in public places, with alcohol consumption in the home being mostly unregulated. Some countries also have different age limits for different types of alcoholic drinks.
Recently, a new World Health Organisation (WHO) report said that a rising number of Tanzanians are risking their lives , according to the 2014 Global Status Report on alcohol consumption.
The report stated that the use of alcohol was a factor in more than 200 diseases and injury conditions. The report provided country profiles for 194 WHO member states.
“Men suffer the most from the negative consequences of drinking in Tanzania. Some 67.4 per cent of men and 65.1 per cent of women in every 100,000 alcohol users aged 15 and older are prone to death caused by liver cancer as a direct consequence of heavy drinking,” the report indicated.
According to 2012 figures, road traffic accidents attributed to alcohol claimed the lives of 19 per cent of males and 6.8 per cent of females in every 100,000 people aged 15+ in the country.
Reports from Uganda published by The Monitor yesterday had it that about half of teenagers aged between 12 and 18 in Kampala slums take alcohol and nearly the same number have their first sexual act before the age of 14, a new study says.
The study, “High risk study among slum youths in Kampala City” was conducted by the Uganda Youth Development Link (UYDEL) among 1,134 individuals in selected slums in Kampala. The study found that 46 per cent of the youths aged between 12 and 18 take alcohol while 42 per cent had their first sexual intercourse at age 14.
No comments:
Post a Comment