Posted on 03/03/2003 4:37:13 PM PST by qam1
Rich countries pledge to help poor nations fight tobacco
Fiona Fleck Geneva
The European Union and the World Bank have pledged to make development aid available on request to help the world’s poorer countries to control tobacco, seen as a major killer.
Financing public health campaigns and other aspects of tobacco control in developing countries has been a major sticking point in a draft treaty aimed at cutting deaths from smoking.
Once the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is ratified in the coming months, poor countries will need additional funds to implement it and to launch major public information campaigns. The treaty is unlikely to include pledges to fund this, but agreements between donors and individual countries could provide the necessary funding.
"Until now there have been very few, if any, requests from developing countries concerning the allocation of developing aid funds for tobacco control," said Jukka Sailas from the WHO’s non-communicable diseases and mental health section.
"We are at the beginning but on the right track. First, governments need to recognise the need for these funds, although many competing priorities exist, but the World Bank and the EU and several bilateral donors have made it clear they are prepared to help," Mr Sailas said.
"The WHO is also ready to assist countries in developing effective tobacco control strategies and funding requests to the donor community."
Top officials from the European Union and the World Bank met the WHO’s director general, Gro Harlem Brundtland—who initiated the convention on tobacco control—on Monday in Geneva and earlier this month in Brussels. They agreed that whereas smoking was retreating in developed countries, it was on the rise in developing countries.
They concluded that tobacco control should be an integral part of development policy. Of an estimated 4.9 million deaths from smoking in 2000, about half were in developing countries. This figure is expected to rise sharply in the next few years.
Developing countries have been increasingly targeted by tobacco industry marketing in recent years. Official agree that developing countries face an increasing threat from fatal diseases linked to smoking and that tobacco consumption is a drain on the poor and can contribute to malnutrition.
By selling them more tobacco... and patches, gum and medicine too! Bwahahahah!
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