Feb 7, 2008, 16:02 GMT
New York - Of the 150 governments that signed a convention on tobacco control in 2005, not a single one has fully implemented measures to fight the annual 5.4 million tobacco-related deaths, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
WHO, with the private financial assistance of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, made public its first analysis of the 3-year-old global tobacco-use and control campaign, saying that governments collected 500 times more tobacco taxes than they spent on anti-tobacco efforts.
'While efforts to combat tobacco are gaining momentum, virtually every country needs to do more,' WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in the report released in New York with Bloomberg.
Bloomberg, whose administration banned smoking in public places and restaurants and raised cigarette prices, called the report 'revolutionary.'
The report said 80 per cent of the 150 signers failed to fully implement even one of the six measures demanded by the convention and none has fully implemented them. The measures are: monitor tobacco use and devise prevention policies; protect people from tobacco smoke; help smokers who want to quit; warn of tobacco dangers; enforce bans on tobacco advertising and raise tobacco taxes.
The report said unless those measures are implemented, the death toll from tobacco use could increase to 8 million people a year by 2030.
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