PHA-Exchange> World Health Assembly adopts historic Tobacco Control Pact

[Work for a Better Bangladesh]

World Health Assembly adopts historic Tobacco Control Pact


Framework Convention on Tobacco Control now ready for signature

GENEVA -- The 192 members of the World Health Organization today 
unanimously adopted the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) 
aimed at curbing tobacco-related deaths and disease. This is the first 
international treaty negotiated under the auspices of the World Health 
Organization (WHO).

The Convention requires countries to impose restrictions on tobacco 
advertising, sponsorship and promotion, establish new labelling and clean 
indoor air controls and strengthen legislation to clamp down on tobacco 
smuggling.

Today, we are acting to save billions of lives and protect peoples health 
for generations to come. This is a historic moment in global public health, 
demonstrating the international will to tackle a threat to health head 
on,said Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General of the WHO to the 56th 
World Health Assembly.

Now we must see this Convention come into force as soon as possible, and 
countries must use it as the basis of their national tobacco-control 
legislation,she said. Four years in the making, the Framework Convention on 
Tobacco Control has been a priority in the WHOs global work to stem the 
tobacco epidemic. Tobacco now kills some five million people each year. 
This death toll could double to reach 10 million by 2020 if countries do 
not implement the measures of the FCTC. While smoking rates are declining 
in some industrialised countries, they are increasing, especially among the 
young, in many developing countries. These will account for over seventy 
percent of that projected death toll.

We must do our utmost to ensure that young people everywhere have the best 
opportunities for a healthy life. By signing, ratifying and acting on this 
Tobacco Convention, we can live up to this responsibility,said Dr 
Brundtland. To bring the FCTC into force, forty countries are needed to 
ratify or otherwise accept it.

Every country present in this room will testify to the challenges we faced 
as we worked on this final document. We now have to ensure the agreement we 
have reached will do what is intended to do save lives and prevent 
disease,said ambassador Luis Felipe Seixas de Corrêa, the Brazilian 
diplomat who chaired the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body of the FCTC. 
The 6th round of negotiations, which arrived at the final text, finished on 
1 March 2003.

The FCTC will be open for signature at WHO headquarters from 16 to 22 June 
2003 and thereafter at the UN headquarters (New York) from 30 June 2003 to 
29 June 2004.

<http://tobacco.who.int/>All background on the FCTC .

For more information contact:

Helen Green - Information Officer
Tobacco Free Initiative
WHO
Telephone: (+41 22) 791 3432
Mobile phone: (+41) 79 475 5572
Fax: (+41 22) 791 4832
Email: <mailto:greenh at who.int>greenh at who.int



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