Written By Vanessa Kariuki ||
The Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) dashboard was launched by the Ministry of Health in partnership with Development Gateway through the Division of Tobacco Control.Â
To promote the implementation of tobacco control in the nation, the dashboard gives decision-makers access to pertinent data.
The TCDI Kenya dashboard is part of a larger initiative to fight Kenya’s escalating tobacco use prevalence, which is one of the major, preventable causes of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).
In Kenya, NCDs such as cardiovascular disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, malignancies, and renal illnesses cause more than 50% of hospital admissions and 39% of all fatalities each year.
At the dashboard’s debut in Nairobi, Dr Patrick Amoth, Kenya’s Director General for Health, emphasized the importance of making decisions based on data in order to address the NCD problem facing the nation.Â
The Development Gateway and the University of Cape Town’s Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP) collaborated to develop a number of nation-specific platforms, including the TCDI dashboard.
There are already TCDI national dashboards for South Africa, Zambia, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, and one is going to be released for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
With the introduction of the TCDI dashboard, policymakers in Kenya now have a potent tool at their disposal to promote evidence-based decision-making, support initiatives to decrease tobacco use and support public health outcomes.
