Jump to full article: Daily Dispatch (za), 2008-06-04
Author: Bobby Ramakant
Intro: SOUTH Africa, along with many other countries, needs to scale up the cost-effective, proven and World Health Organisation recommended strategies to reduce the number of deaths attributed to tobacco use.
The 2008 World Health Statistics Report, released by the WHO 10 days before this year’s World No Tobacco Day on May 31, increases the urgency of scaling up quality interventions that will control tobacco use.
About half of all countries in the world do not implement any of the recommended tobacco control policies . . .
“Big tobacco’s interference in health policy is one of the greatest threats to the treaty’s implementation and enforcement. Philip Morris/Altria, British American Tobacco (BAT) and Japan Tobacco (JT) use their political influence to weaken, delay and defeat tobacco control legislation around the world. While the industry claims to have changed its ways, it continues to use sophisticated methods to undermine meaningful legislation,” said Kathy Mulvey of Corporate Accountability International at a meeting last year on the global tobacco treaty – the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
The alert monitoring of tobacco corporations in South Africa and holding them accountable for violating existing health policies will further boost the impact of the WHO’s recommended MPOWER package in reducing tobacco use globally.
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