Jump to full article: The Lancet, 2009-10-10
Author: Margaret Harris Cheng
Intro: Member states of WHO's Western Pacific region have unanimously agreed on a new action plan to tackle the huge burden of tobacco-related illness in the region. Margaret Harris Cheng reports.
To the surprise and delight of tobacco-control campaigners, a plan to operationalise the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) was passed with barely a murmur of dissent at the WHO's Western Pacific regional meeting held in Hong Kong last month.
Although representatives of three of the world's biggest tobacco producers—China, the USA, and Japan—were present when the plan came up for discussion, only China voiced any misgivings about the plan. “The action plan should offer guidance—it should not be a mandatory requirement for member states”, China's representative told the meeting.
The ease with which the plan was accepted was a surprise because it is considered a radical departure from its predecessors (this is the fifth such plan for the WHO's Western Pacific region). For the first time, the plan sets out objectives for member states and a timeframe (2010—14) in which those objectives should ideally be reached. All member states are expected to attend a progress review in 2012, and be ready and willing to explain what stage they are at with tobacco control and why they have, or have not, achieved their objectives.
It was this, the setting of very specific objectives, that made China somewhat uncomfortable.
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