Health Ministry selected for prestigious award for tobacco control

Patna, Apr 21: American Cancer Society has selected Health ministry for the prestigious '2006 Luther L Terry Award' for its Exemplary Leadership in Tobacco Control.

The International selection committee has selected India for its outstanding contributions in the field of tobacco control.

The American Cancer Society has written a letter in this regard to the nominator, Dr Dhirendra Narayan Sinha, Chairman School of Preventive Oncology, who had nominated the Union Health Ministry.

The award would be conferred during the World Conference on Tobacco Health in Washington on July 14, 2006.

The American Cancer Society in its letter mentioned that Union Health Minister Ambumani Ramdoss is a model which other nations' people may aspire. The letter said the Ministry had demonstrated its unrelenting stance on health promotions and tobacco control through its support of a comprehensive national tobacco control policy and an effective Framework Convention of Tobacco Control(FCTC).

The letter further stated that the Ministrys vision for tobacco control extends beyond legislation and its financial support for NGO's engaged in tobacco control.

Dr Sinha told UNI today that the American Cancer Society found the Health Ministry had done a commendable job in formulating the comprehensive Tobacco Control Act of India and its sincere efforts for implementing the policy.

Dr Sinha said the Ministers zeal and determinations to formulate new policy, banning smoking in the world of reel cinema was commendable.

Dr Sinha said, ''This award is designed to recognise the heroes in tobacco control who are making progress every day in the global fight against tobacco, adding that the Union Health Ministry under Dr Ambumani Ramdoss had put in extra efforts in passage of the Bill to form the Act, banning tobacco use in public places. He said even during the regime of former Union Health Minister Dr C P Thakur, the Ministry continuously strived to stop the use of tobacco and its advertisment.

Dr Sinha said this years awards will be presented in five categories- Distinguished career award, Exemplary Leadership by a Government ministry, Outstanding Individual Leadership, Outstanding organisation and Outstanding Research Contribution.

Besides Government Of India, the Department of Health and Children, Republic of Ireland has also been selected for Exemplary Leadership award this year.

All the awards are named after late United States Surgeon general Luther L Terry, MD, who authored the landmark of 1964 Surheons General Report which connected tobacco use to lungs cancer and other illeness.

Referring to the letter, Dr Sinha said the 125 countries including Chad, China, Greece and Malaysia ratified the FCTC and the contributions of the achievers in the growing global movement to combat unprecedented and aggressive world wide tobacco marketing tactics were relevant.

As per the WHO, there are approxmimately 1.3 billion smokers in the world- one third of the global population aged 15 years and above. The WHO estimated that eventually 650 million of them will die from smoking and this number exceeds the expected number of deaths from HIV, Malaria, Tuberculosis, automobile accidents, maternal mortality, homicide and suicide put together.

UNI