• March 29, 2024

WHO chief congratulates Turkmen president

Turkmenistan is the country with the lowest proportion of smokers, eight percent, according to a Geo News (Pakistan) story quoting the World Health Organization’s director general, Dr. Margaret Chan.

“Recently a WHO overview showed that in Turkmenistan only eight percent of the population smokes,” Chan told the country’s President, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov.

“This is the lowest national indicator in the world. I congratulate you on this achievement,” she said at a health forum in the capital Ashgabat.

Chan noted that the country had ratified the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2011, by which time it had already banned smoking in public places.

Also speaking at the forum, Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, head of the Convention Secretariat, challenged the country to drive smoking down to five percent.

In 1990, 27 percent of Turkmen males over 15 and one percent of females smoked.

In April, the country held a month of public exercises and sporting events under the slogan ‘health and happiness’.