[Intl-tobacco] Rockefeller launches tobacco control program

[Robert Weissman]

Rockefeller Foundation launches a new program to support reducing the
health burden of tobacco on the poor in developing countries

"Trading Tobacco for Health," a new international health initiative,
to focus initially on Southeast Asia 

Bangkok, Thailand - May 31, 2000.  On World No-Tobacco Day, observed here
in ceremonies by the Royal Thai Government and the Director General of the
World Health Organization, the Rockefeller Foundation announces a new
initiative to support reducing the health burden of tobacco on the poor in
developing countries.  By building local research and capacity, this
program will help enable developing countries to respond to the threat of
tobacco consumption.

Initially the Foundation will concentrate its resources on Southeast Asia,
with particular attention to Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia.  
It is anticipated that the Foundation will provide up to $10 million in
support over the next five years through projects related to the "Trading
Tobacco for Health Initiative".

This program marks a new chapter in the Foundation's efforts in
international health.  As Dr. Lincoln Chen, the Foundation's Executive
Vice President, remarked, "While we recognize and continue to work on the
unfinished agenda for communicable diseases, the international health
community cannot ignore the rising toll from the tobacco epidemic in
developing countries.  To avert tomorrow's tragedy, we must act today."

Drawing upon proven effective practices, the Rockefeller Foundation will
support locally-generated research and interventions.  The evidence-based
strategy will include, for example, efforts to reduce smoking initiation
among youth; support for effective adoption of comprehensive tobacco
control policies like smoke-free public spaces; and an examination of the
impact of tobacco on the livelihoods of the poor.

Between 1990 and 2020, the world death toll from tobacco will rise from
3.0 to 8.4 million per year.  Virtually this entire annual increase is
expected to occur in developing countries.  Now responsible for one in ten
deaths, it will claim one in six by 2030 - ten million lives a year. Put
in perspective, over the next 30 years, the number of people expected to
die from tobacco-related illness exceeds the death totals for AIDS,
tuberculosis, maternal mortality, homicide, suicide, and automobile
accidents combined.

Reinforcing the Foundation's focus on equity in health, the initiative
will emphasize tobacco's impact upon the poor and ways to respond to this
disproportionate burden of disease.  Tobacco use is more prevalent among
the poor and amplifies other health problems.  Tobacco-related disease can
be a major precipitant of medical impoverishment.  And tobacco consumption
exacts a high opportunity cost on poor households, limiting resources
available for feeding the family.

"By supporting networking, research in the local context and access to
expert resources, we can help bridge the lag in globalization between the
trade of tobacco and the developing country response to it," said
Professor Gordon Conway, president of the Rockefeller Foundation.  "With
this support, we hope that developing countries will themselves be better
positioned to tackle the challenges of tobacco use over the long term and
on their own terms."

Conway remarked that globalization -- whose benefits have accrued to a
very small fraction of humankind often at the expense of the world's poor
-- has accelerated the trade and promotion of tobacco.  "Trading Tobacco
for Health" is an attempt to redirect the currents of globalization to
benefit the world's poor.

"Trading Tobacco for Health" comes just over ten years after several Asian
markets, including Thailand's, were forced open to U.S. cigarette imports.  
With its passage of strong tobacco control policies and its active
non-governmental efforts to reduce smoking, Thailand has lowered smoking
prevalence over the past decade.  Campaigns to raise public awareness of
the health harms of smoking, increased excise taxes on tobacco, and the
establishment of a Health Promotion Foundation set an example for the
developing world.  The program will benefit from the regional expertise
this experience has afforded.

The Rockefeller Foundation stressed that this new initiative can only be a
small part of the platform of support necessary to reduce tobacco use
among the poor in developing countries.  In order to achieve substantial
and sustainable long-term gains, the Rockefeller Foundation will work to
encourage other organizations to make tobacco control an important part of
their funding strategies.

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About the Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation's approach to current global challenges focuses
on poor people's daily existence - their lives and livelihoods - and how
the process of globalization can be turned to their advantage. The
Foundation's program funding is focused and targeted among four "themes"
that reflect the interconnected and intertwined themes of people's lives -
their health, food, work and creative expression.

The Rockefeller Foundation has a long history of both creating new
knowledge by employing the most up-to-date tools of science and technology
and then disseminating that knowledge to ameliorate human suffering.  In
the Foundation's past this method of using knowledge to focus on the root
causes of problems, rather than their symptoms, has led to successes
including the eradication of hookworm, the development of a Yellow Fever
vaccine, and the modernization of developing country agriculture known as
the Green Revolution.

contact: e-mail: ttfh@rockfound.org