Declaration calls for tougher anti-tobacco measures

Health ministers from the 11 countries that make up the World Health Organization’s South-East Asia Region signed a declaration on Monday pledging to accelerate measures aimed at reducing tobacco use, according to a story in The Jakarta Post.

“Tobacco use in the South-East Asia Region is alarmingly high, triggering major health and economic consequences,” the region’s director Poonam Khetrapal Singh was quoted as saying at the signing of the declaration.

“Tougher actions are needed for tobacco control and prevention. Countries must equally tax all tobacco products, ban tobacco advertisements, enforce pictorial warnings on cigarette packaging and implement bans on smoking in public.”

The Dili Declaration was signed on the sidelines of the region’s 68th committee meeting, which started on Monday in the capital of Timor-Leste.

The declaration calls on governments, United Nations agencies and ‘stakeholders’ to accelerate tobacco control in the region, the inhabitants of which consume more than one-third of the world’s tobacco.

Khetrapal Singh called for the enforcement of stringent policies and measures to help people reduce and eventually quit tobacco; to prevent young people from taking up tobacco use; and to protect people from second-hand tobacco smoke.