| Summary: | Background and challenges to implementation
Section 6b of Cigarettes and
Other Tobacco Products Act (COTPA)-2004 and Article 16 of Framework Convention
on Tobacco Control (FCTC) insists on restricting the access and availability of
tobacco products to children as one of the supply reduction measures. Several
countries have taken initiatives restricting the sale of tobacco products near
Educational Institutions (EIs) and in India it is prohibited around 100 meter
radius. However, the implementation has
become a major challenge as it is difficult to map the distance between EIs and
tobacco outlets, and to prove the shop keepers that they are evading the law. To
address this issue, an android based application called Safe Zone is designed.
Intervention or response
Safe Zone is a
Software tool that helps to identify tobacco outlets in and around EI. The
technology used was Google MAP API, Google Maps, HTML5 / CSS3 / Java Script,
GPS - Global Positioning System and GPRS - Data connection, Geo-coordinates
algorithm. The details of the software are given as Figure 1.
Results and lessons learnt
This
software gets your current GPS location and finds all EIs within 100 meter
radius nearby and flags us along with the distance. It can show us the precise
DISPLACEMENT between given shop and given EI locations. This software works in
almost all smart phones that have GPS and GPRS - data connection.
[The internals of the software]
Conclusions and key recommendations
This can be
customized and used in any country based on their respective country law. It
will help the Social activists, Government officials and Law Enforcement
officers, who wants to enforce the Law of the Land in creating safe zone to
take evidence based actions to curtail the sale of tobacco in the EI zones and General Public who wants to check whether their kid's school/
home is located in a tobacco free zone or not.
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