Islamabad - The Ministry of Health has finally approved a new set of health warnings for cigarette packs, but these will be introduced with a delay of seven months as the previous timeline of January 1, 2009, has now been extended to July 1, 2009, sources privy to the ministry revealed to ‘The News’ here on Tuesday.

The new health warnings, which will be in place on a six-monthly rotational basis with effect from July 1, are ‘Smoking causes throat and mouth cancers,’ ‘Protect children: do not let them breathe your smoke,’ ‘Quit smoking, live longer,’ and ‘Smoking severely harms you and others around you.’ Minister for Health Sherry Rehman is reported to have approved the text warnings only a couple of days ago; approval of the same by the Ministry of Law is still awaited.

A source working for an anti-tobacco NGO regretted Ministry of Health’s strategy to force further delay in the introduction of graphical health warnings. “Now, the Ministry of Health will have nothing but the new set of text-based health warnings to announce on World No-Tobacco Day (WNTD) 2009, which is observed on May 31 each year. This will cause further delay in introduction of graphical health warnings on cigarette packs,” he commented.

‘The News’ has also learnt that the Global Tobacco Free Initiative at the World Health Organisation’s headquarters in Geneva is also contemplating the selection of a theme related to enforcement of pictorial health warnings on cigarette packs for next year’s WNTD. Each year, the Ministry of Health comes under tremendous pressure ahead of WNTD because each year, the country is exactly on the opposite track of the WNTD theme. Upholding past traditions, it will once again have nothing to offer on WNTD 2009 but these four health warnings.

Requesting anonymity, sources confided that “certain elements” were trying their level best to influence the health regulators to get ‘Smoking Kills’ as the new health warning in Urdu on the front and in English on the back of the 20% flip top area of cigarette packs. “There is a big question mark on the impact that text-based health warnings, and specially the warning ‘smoking kills,’ has on consumers. In a country like Pakistan, which has a dismal literacy rate, the likelihood of the target population understanding text health warnings is quite remote. The only way we can hope for a decline in the number of smokers is through introduction of graphical health warnings,” they said.