A FILIPINO doctor who heads a nongovernmental organization (NGO) that seeks to spread awareness of the dangers of smoking supported two former officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) for identifying the “missing link” in the global tobacco policy amid the slow decline in the number of smokers in most countries.
Professors Robert Beaglehole and Ruth Bonita asked the medical journal The Lancet on May 14 to endorse tobacco harm reduction as a crucial strategy for reducing the health burden caused by tobacco and back calls for an independent review of WHO’s tobacco control policies.
The two experts said that harm reduction is missing in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). They noted that the number of tobacco users has barely changed since the treaty took effect 17 years ago.
“Tobacco control is not working for most of the world,” they said in an article titled “Tobacco control: Getting to the finish line” published in The Lancet on May 14, 2022. “Most people smoke because they are dependent on nicotine. Tobacco harm reduction reduces the harm caused by burnt tobacco by replacing cigarettes with much less harmful ways of delivering nicotine; these alternatives have great potential to disrupt the cigarette industry,” they said.
Dr. Lorenzo Mata, president of Quit For Good, an NGO committed to “spreading awareness about the grave consequences of smoking tobacco as well as creating solutions to the tobacco smoking epidemic,” said that the WHO should listen to the assessment of the two experts.
“On behalf of tobacco harm reduction advocates around the world, I thank professors Beaglehole and Bonita for speaking the inconvenient and glaring truth about the WHO and FCTC. Harm reduction has an important role to play in tobacco control, particularly in the Philippines, where almost a quarter of the adult population are smokers, and the smoking cessation rate is very low,” Mata said.
Beaglehole, professor emeritus of the University of Auckland, chairs The Lancet’s Noncommunicable Disease Action Group. He served as the former director of the WHO Department of Chronic Disease and Health Promotion from 2004 to 2007.
Bonita, who is also a professor emeritus of the University of Auckland, was a former director of surveillance of the Noncommunicable Disease Cluster of WHO from 1999 to 2005.
Beaglehole and Bonita said that the refusal of the WHO and the FCTC to recognize harm reduction “is not grounded on 21st century technological advances and is unduly influenced by vested interests who promote nicotine abstinence.” They added that despite the FCTC implementation, only 30 percent of countries are on track to achieve the WHO adult tobacco use target of a 30 percent reduction in prevalence by 2030.
Source:
The Manila Times
May 30, 2022
Former WHO experts backed on view on harm reduction | The Manila Times