The World Health Organisation cited “notable progress” to reduce tobacco use in its latest Global Tobacco Epidemic report and called for better controls on “shameless” industry interference.

Since the previous report in 2015, an additional 2.3 billion people in 42 countries have been covered by one of seven protection measures instituted a decade ago via WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the report states. In the decade since the measures known collectively as MPOWER were instituted, nearly two-thirds of the world’s population have been covered by at least one. They include higher taxes, pack warnings, advertising bans, smoke-free areas and cessation programmes.
WHO issued a call to member countries to fully implement Article 5.3 of the FCTC, which seeks to block interference by the tobacco industry. “Although an increasing number of countries have begun to implement the recommendations in the WHO FCTC Article 5.3 guidelines, no country has yet fully implemented all of these provisions at best-practice level,” states the report available at: https://goo.gl/zFvgBW