Assignment Sample on 7140SOH Health Policy in Organizations and Systems 

Introduction   

Overview of tobacco smoking on global basis with respect to UK and South Africa

Over the years smoking of cigarettes has been the major problem that leads to the maximum use of tobacco worldwide leading to a number of health problems. More than 8 million people die each year due to the use of tobacco and around 1.2 million people die from secondary exposure to smoke (Al-Amoudi & Latsis, 2019, pp. 119). Overall 80 percent of deaths tend to occur in the low and middle class families with weak financial conditions. In the country of the UK the system of National Healthcare (NHS) seemed to start producing e-cigarettes that tends to lessen the use of tobacco among the civilians of the UK. The products tend to offer the civilians with the considerable reduction in the amount of tobacco usage in their daily life.

The “Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency” seemed to encourage the smoking companies to invent products that will provide the smokers with the same kind of experience with a major quality reduction in the usage of tobacco. In the UK, the government has also taken up the notion of reduction in the aspect of smoking by providing a wide range of policies and measures that will discourage the use of tobacco smoking. According to Bonevski et al. (2017, pp. 22), the government has also taken up measures to promote good health by initiating healthy measures, guidelines for better health and increase in physical activities. In the context of South Africa, the organisation of (WHO FCTC) or “World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control” has taken up policies and measures from the year 2000 by reducing the number of tobacco smoking by adults. The act “Tobacco Products Control Act of 1993” has further formulated to control the use of tobacco in the land of South Africa. This act seems to ban on the advertisements and thereby the selling of tobacco cigarettes. The government has also seemed to have increased the taxes regarding the tobacco use.

Policy drivers for the reduction in the use of tobacco in UK and South Africa

            Referring to the policy that prevents the use of tobacco usage among the civilians is by a number of policies that aims to influence the behaviour of the civilians who are addicted to smoking. In the UK the government has seemed to initiate by pledging that by the year 2030, the civilians in England will put an end to the aspect of smoking. They have also taken up a variety of measures to make the civilians understand how deadly the effect of smoking can end their lives and so may lead to the growth of the deadliest disease of cancer. Although the recovery is possible, but still complete cure has not been assured by the medical researchers (Campos & Reich, 2019, pp. 235). In the country the South African governments has initiated a ban on the advertisement of the use of tobacco products and as well have also increased the tax on tobacco use.

In the above figure, the usage of the tobacco product is explored based on the results collected from the “Statista Global Consumer Survey” conducted in the year 2021. In this bar graph it can be evidenced that the use of cigarettes is maximum as a product of tobacco and that tends to be almost 35 percent of the total respondents (Kunst, 2021). It is also evidenced that almost 52 percent of the respondents seemed to use no tobacco products, which is a good aspect.

The second figure emphasises on the rate of smoking of cigarettes within the UK till 2019, based on the specific gender criteria. In the graph it is acknowledged that the use of tobacco products has considerably reduced over the past years and based on the genders of men and women it is acknowledged that the male tend to use tobacco products more often (Conway, 2021). Among the adults the rate of use of tobacco products tends to be around 20 percent of the total respondents in the year 2019.

Main Body

 Policy drivers in the UK and South Africa and resource allocation

The UK government has implemented the use of e-cigarettes by the association of NHS or “National Healthcare System” by encouraging the cigarette companies to produce more and more modern products of cigarettes for the reduction of tobacco use (Capewell & Lloyd-Williams 2018, pp. 140). The government of the UK and South Africa has implemented a number of policies for the guidance of how services are to be developed which help in the achievement of the goals that are good for the civilians through the proper deliverance of healthcare. The policy drivers are the targets that help in the successive reduction of smoking. In the UK both the government and non-government organisations sorted out some drivers that tend to influence the policies such as “higher tax”, “legal raising of the minimum age”, “restriction to smoking in public places”, “treatment for subsidies in the treatment of smoking”, “behavioural economics”, “campaigns for advertising the health dangers and as well to support to stop smoking” (Drop et al. 2017).

In the country of South Africa, the government made an intensive intervention to control the use of tobacco by “increasing the price of tobacco products” at high rates. According to Goodchild & Zheng, (2019), a number of advertisements are made for the reduction of smoking by using such allocated resources by the government.

An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the policies to reduce tobacco use

In South Africa, the act of “the Tobacco Products Control Act 83” of 1993, “Tobacco Regulations Act 2003 or Republic Act No. 9211” is implemented to put a ban on the advertisements that encourage smoking among civilians. In the UK, the act of “the Health Act 2006 for England and Wales” led to the restriction of smoking in public places such as restaurants, malls, pubs etc. In the UK the policies that restrict smoking lead to a number of advantages and strengths such as the “no-smoking zones” helped in the reduction of the second-hand smoke of tobacco by the non-smokers. It also leads to the reduction of air pollution which furthermore helped in making the quality of air better in the indoors. The initiation of “No Smoking Day” helped in lowering the percentage of smokers. The “NHS or National Healthcare System” with its smoking services has led 23.4 per cent of civilians to quit smoking within 52 weeks.

The ban on smoking in South Africa led to reduced smoking and also with the implementation of Article 8 by WHO FCTC led to provisions to have a smoke free environment (Gore & Parker, 2019). Although the policies have significant strength in restricting as well as reducing the use of tobacco, still there lie some loopholes and weaknesses that are to be eradicated immediately. It seems quite easy to say no to smoking but it is quite difficult in practice, smokers get addicted to the drug and tend to smoke which becomes their nature and whether they are willing or not they will crave smoking. As suggested by Greenfield et al. (2019), in certain places the policies to ban smoking are not effective for the reduction of tobacco use. The policy restricts smoking but still, many civilians are there to buy tobacco on the black market.

Whether there are any conflicts of interest in national government

Obviously, there are hidden conflicts within the national government regarding the use of tobacco in both the countries of the UK and South Africa. The government of the UK banned smoking due to the raising in the pollution of air that affected the entire environment. The other aspect of banning smoking is the increased cases of death and cancer all over the country (Watt et al. 2019). Furthermore, this leads to the generation of absenteeism by lessening the level of productivity from the breaks related to smoking. The costs of cleaning the butts of the cigarettes are also high and at times treating the cost of smoking by the burnt houses tends to increase the cost (Hilton et al. 2019). Smoking leads to the decline in the output by the economy of the country as it is decreased by the death of active as well as passive smokers.

The additional cost tends to be huge and massive by the smokers as well as the councils that include treatment to the deadly diseases caused by both active and passive smoking. This moreover increases the aspect of poverty to the entire economy of the country (Tricco et al. 2018). On the other hand, the government of South Africa has imposed a complete ban on all the products of tobacco within the market. This is because the government wants a successive reduction in the aspects of the negative impacts on the health issues of the civilians after the emergence of the pandemic COVID-19. This will help the civilian to maintain better health and will lead to a better lifestyle in the immediate future. According to Holmes et al. (2017), the government wanted to save lives by successively reducing the deadliest impacts of tobacco.

   Leadership challenges and skills in implementing policy changes at an international, national, and local level

In implementing the policies related to the ban of smoking in the concerned countries of South Africa and the UK, the aspect of leadership is quite important as without the proper execution of policy among its civilians the policy becomes ineffective. In the country of South Africa, the ethics of leadership seems to be poor. As opined by Knai et al. (2018), regarding the policies and the rules and regulations of the local government as well as that of the national government the study has shown that their behaviour seems to be not quite appropriate and parliamentary. As said by Toebes et al. (2018), the local government employees and the leadership qualities are not stable in nature which further seems to affect the leadership aspects of the national government. Certain challenges are also been acknowledged in the democracy of South Africa due to the improper delivery of services. Due to the improper deliverance of the services to the public, the civilians tend to lose their trust in the government. The maladministration and the improper use of the public funds also tend to highly affect the leadership qualities of the government and that further leads to the raising up of problems and pepper execution of the policies (Knai et al. 2018). The community members of South Africa are disrespectful towards the improper administration of the government leading to raise many problems that are affecting the welfare concerns of the common civilians.

On the other hand, the leadership aspect of the government of the UK seems to be quite stable and proper in administering the execution of the policies and rules as well regulations related to the restriction of smoking. Although reviewing the current scenario, it is evidenced that the government of the UK is still facing new challenges in the aspect of qualities related to leadership. The challenges are providing proper inspiration to the other in order to influence them to maintain their positive level of motivation, inspiring their innovative and creative level (Sacks et al. 2019). The other aspect of leadership is successfully developing others and leading to change their attitudes and nature of their work in order to increase the efficiency level. The government of the UK faced other problems related to the proper management and handling of the entire team that will successfully implement and execute the policies that will help in the reduction of smoking among the civilians (Lee, et al. 2018). On the aspect of leadership, the government is still facing problems in handling the different perspectives that tend to arise from the local and the national as well as international levels of government.

Comparison of two countries and the effectiveness of the policies

The impact of catering to both the countries it is evident that the country of UK and that of South Africa has differences in the level of effectiveness in respect to the application of the policies among its civilians. According to Maani et al. (2020), the difference in the effectiveness of the policies is majorly due to the difference in the aspects of political, social and economic spheres, whether these aspects are strong or not. Although the policy of “Tobacco Products Control Act 83” of 1993 is quite effective in reducing the number of tobacco smokers, the policy is still not quite sufficient in the complete eradication of the smoke-free country. The act restricted the advertisement on smoking and thereby leading to a significant reduction in the number of tobacco users including both young and adults (McNeill et al. 2018). In contradiction, this law seems to have certain loopholes that affected the usage of tobacco. It is seen that around 93 per cent of the total population of smokers are purchasing cigarettes instead of the ban and cigarettes are sold on the informal channels (Peacock et al. 2018). This is because the government needs to take care of illicit market controls and the proper execution of the ban on sales on manufacture, distribution and transport of cigarettes.

Conclusion

Analysing the entire study on the aspects of the policies related to the restriction of smoking, on both the countries of South Africa and the UK it is evidenced that the application of policy that restricts smoking is quite successful in the methods of implementation but in the aspects of maintaining these policies among the civilians is quite difficult. Although the government in South Africa has imposed a ban on cigarettes, still only 9 per cent of the total population of smokers are actually restricted from the use of tobacco but another 93 per cent are still purchasing cigarettes in spite of the ban. The fact lies behind the improper administration and the inefficient leadership qualities among the national and local levels of government. All these further lead to the promotion of the ineffectiveness of the policies among the sellers (Watts et al. 2019). These problems can be eradicated by the application of a proper ban on the illicit market present and also by effective rules and regulations related to the distribution, transportation and manufacture of the variety of products of tobacco.

On the contrary, drastic results are acknowledged on the restriction of smoking by the UK government. The UK government applied “the Health Act 2006 for England and Wales‘ ‘ within the country that resulted in the decline of smokers by 93 per cent. The lockdown due to the drastic emergence of the pandemic led to the 70 per cent reduction of smokers in the country of the UK within 6 weeks. This is because the stable government of the UK was quite efficient in the aspects of leadership successfully devising the plan for implementation of no smoking among the civilians. The penalty and the strict policies led to a decrease in the usage of tobacco products all around the country.

The government also made comprehensive smoke free policies that will restrict smoking indoors and in common places and also they have initiated the making of mass reach campaigns that relate to the communications for health with the use of various media platforms. It is evident that due to the emergence of the pandemic, a huge number of civilians died due to its effect and that led to the huge loss in the economy of the country which triggered the government to put a ban on the use of tobacco products. The other aspect of the government is due to the advertisements of over a variety of platforms and making the civilians understand about the deadliest diseases that occur due to smoking of tobacco.

Furthermore, the fear of the impacts of pandemics and the increased death rates among the UK civilians led to a consequent drop in the level of smoking tobacco among the total respondents within the country (Willemsen, 2018). The reduction in the rate of smoking cigarettes also leads to a decrease in the aspects of air pollution. Taxes on cigarettes and laws related to smoke-free air made it successful in reducing the usage of tobacco among the civilians and thereby successfully promoted the aspect of better health among the citizens.

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