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WHO says 'policy coherence' key to tobacco control in Indonesia
Indonesia needs interinstitutional policy coherence to effectively control tobacco consumption, the WHO says, citing the high smoking prevalence among the country's adult population.
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A stock photograph illustrates anti-smoking. The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged Indonesia to develop a more coherent policy framework to control tobacco consumption in the country, which has the highest smoking prevalence in Asia. (Courtesy of WHO/-)
T
he World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended that Indonesia develop a more coherent policy framework to increase the effectiveness of its tobacco control measures, in light of the high prevalence of cigarette smoking among the population.
WHO Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) program manager Vinayak Prasad said that Indonesia needed a whole-government approach to ensure that the measures were implemented, as did other countries that had some form of tobacco control in place but were seeing poor compliance.
“Indonesia is a good example where we need to create policy coherence among all stakeholders, not just the health ministry, to move the [tobacco control] policy,” Prasad said on Tuesday, during the launch of the WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic 2021.
Policy coherence would mean that countries would look at smoking prevalence through a multi-sectoral perspective that involved relevant stakeholders, Prasad added.
The WHO report assessed a country’s tobacco control measures across six areas, including tobacco consumption monitoring, tobacco advertising bans, graphic warnings on tobacco products and taxation policies to limit tobacco consumption.
Public discourse about the country’s tobacco control policy has often been framed around industry versus public health interests, with different state institutions representing each side. The Industry Ministry, for instance, seeks to boost tobacco production to improve the welfare of tobacco farmers, while the Health Ministry has long campaigned for stronger tobacco control.
Read also: Indonesia fails in tobacco control measures
