Tobacco.org

• Smoke alarm from Afghanistan to Morocco 

Under WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI), the 21 Member States of WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region, are stepping up tobacco-control efforts. The Initiative was launched in 1998 and WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC), which is now one of the most widely supported treaties in the history of the United Nations, entered into force in 2005.

The moves can’t come soon enough, according to Dr Fatimah El-Awa, the regional adviser for the Tobacco Free Initiative at WHO’s Office for the Eastern Mediterranean Region, which is based in Cairo.

“When we talk about tobacco, some people still look at us and laugh, saying, ‘Well, people are starving and dying from poverty and you’re talking about tobacco.’ But they don’t understand that tobacco contributes to poverty.”

With stronger tobacco control policies, including smoking bans expanding in public areas like restaurants in more parts of the United States of America (USA) and Europe, cigarette manufacturers are dumping their toxic merchandise in other parts of the world such as the Eastern Mediterranean Region, making tobacco control measures even more imperative, says El-Awa. The region comprises 21 Member States, from Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia in north Africa, through the Gulf countries, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the rest of the Middle East to Afghanistan and Pakistan in south Asia. It also includes Djibouti, Somalia and Sudan in sub-Saharan Africa.

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