Your Excellency The President of Uruguay, dear DG, Ambassadors and Representatives from Permanent Missions, the president of the World Heart Federation, and my dear Colleagues and Friends.
Let me start my remarks on by thanking WHO for the opportunity to join you in commemorating this important date in the annual public health calendar.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Dr Douglas Bettcher for having successfully led for many years WHO’s global WNTDs campaigns, in coordination with WHO regional and country offices. Of course, it is also important to recognize the strong and committed team that works with Doug to make WNTDs a success every year.
It is commendable that WHO Member States established this date exactly thirty years ago with the aim to raise awareness about the growing consequences of tobacco use. A logical approach in line with the Alma-Ata Declaration issued at the International Conference on Primary Health Care 40 years ago.
It was in 1988 that Dr Halfdan Mahler, the third WHO Director General celebrated the First World No Tobacco Day. That very day was the first milestone on the path to raise international awareness about the vast consequences to health from tobacco. He also delivered the first awards in recognition to individuals, institutions and governments showing exemplary leadership in tobacco control.
I happened to be one of the recipients of this honor. It meant a lot to me as a young woman who was facing all odds for being involved as a public servant in this challenging new area that competed with so many other health priorities. And also to my country, Brazil, that was about to adopt a new constitution that provided for the universal right to health with emphasis on preventive measures.
This fact and the celebrations of WNTD in my own country represented not only a landmark in my career but a motivation for an important tobacco growing developing country to secure a number of measures that have eventually halved tobacco use prevalence and impacted significantly on the mortality of Brazilians.
This was also an important practical example for the discussions and decisions in future World Health Assemblies to use WHO constitutional powers to negotiate a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, one of the most important milestones in public health and in the control of non-communicable diseases.
This is just my story but it repeats itself around the world every year and with the same power. Some might think that WNTDs are just one more celebration. But, the experience shows it as a totally different story.
World No-Tobacco days are the very initial step that a number of countries, especially low and middle income countries, give to express their political will towards curbing the tobacco epidemic. It raises the attention of decision and policy makers, the media and the public to the need to act and represent an opportunity to point to the need to protect public health from the tobacco industry strategies.
As we speak here, governments, intergovernmental organizations and the civil society from Africa to Asia, from Europe to the Americas, from the South East Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean are either planning, celebrating or disseminating news about 2018 WNTD. And, they are doing it without the need to shift scarce resources from other priorities; they just do it with the existing resources and by doing so, they show their political will and commitment.
As we move with the implementation of our FCTC2030 project, with thanks to the generous contributions of the UK and Australian Governments, we just confirm this theory. From Samoa to Sierra Leone, the countries that we are supporting through FCTC 2030 are celebrating WNTD2018.
At this point, I would like to make a balance on the actions taken so far and of course, the success stories. Two treaties, the WHO FCTC and the Protocol to Eliminate Illicit Trade were adopted with the first having entered into force nearly fifteen years ago and protect over 90 per cent of the world’s population. While the second has still not entered into force, we are missing just 5 countries to make it become an international treaty at its own right.
Furthermore, the power of the WHO FCTC has catalyzed significant actions in the world: from plain packaging to the ban of flavors in tobacco products, from promoting alternative livelihoods to tobacco growers to address the tobacco industry liability, we have gone a long way already. Indeed, by implementing the demand and supply reduction measures in the treaty, we are reaching out to multiple players including new stakeholders that were never involved before in the subject.
We are going even beyond by identifying innovative approaches for action such as linking tobacco to human rights, studying the impact of tobacco on the environment and including the WHO FCTC as a target for the 2030 sustainable development agenda. We have found that the WHO FCTC can support the achievement of more than 60 SDG targets.
We are involving more and more sectors in the commitment to protect the present and future generations from the devastating health, social, economic and environmental effects of tobacco use.
However, while acknowledging the successes achieved so far, we have still much to do. The more we go, the more the tobacco industry aggressively reacts not only interfering in national legislative processes, threatening or taking legal action, using front groups to promote their case but also inundating the market with a number of new products with unverified and false claims of harm reduction.
That’s the reason why I will end my speech by inviting Parties to the treaty and observers to COP to attend the forthcoming Eight session of the Conference of the Parties of the WHO FCTC from 1 to 6 October 2018 in Geneva. Your presence is fundamental to ensure the treaty machinery is constantly fueled to face new challenges, to ensure evidence-base measures are universally implemented and to move towards a tobacco free world.
I would also like to remind Parties to the treaty that there is a Protocol that needs everybody’s commitment to eliminate illicit trade in tobacco products and invite you to consider becoming Party to it, if possible by depositing it at the UN depositary before July, 2nd.
Finally, I would like on behalf of the Convention Secretariat to thank for the opportunity. I would also wish to express my deep thanks for the hard work and commitment of my small team at the Convention Secretariat.
Today is World No-Tobacco day, lets celebrate.