The China-US Partnership on Smoke-free Workplaces
Dr. Huang Jiefu and Dr. Howard Koh
On September 7, 2012, the China-U.S. Smoke-free Workplace Initiative –a public-private partnership that is the next cooperative effort on tobacco control between the U.S. and China –launched in Beijing. The new initiative aims to expand the number of smoke and tobacco free worksites throughout China. This latest effort demonstrates China’s and the United States’ commitment to moving forward on one of the many goals of the recent United Nations High Level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases. That meeting identified non-communicable diseases, many of which are caused by tobacco use, as a major global health challenge.
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the U.S. and China, and it kills six million people each year worldwide. Of these deaths, 600,000 are due to second-hand smoke. Tobacco use is estimated to cause 443,000 deaths annually (including deaths from secondhand smoke) in the United States. In China, more than 1 million people die from tobacco use annually with 100,000 of those deaths coming from second-hand smoke.
China has made significant strides in tobacco control in recent years. Most recently China has been praised by the World Health Organization for the Ministry of Health’s release of the “China Report on the Health Hazards of Smoking.” This landmark report already has drawn attention to the severity of the tobacco situation in China, where more than one million people die from tobacco use each year. Earlier this year the “Say No to Forced Smoking” campaign, launched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and web services corporation Baidu, drew significant attention to the 100,000 annual deaths caused by second-hand smoke in China.
Committed to reducing the devastating effects of tobacco use, China and the United States both have made progress toward enhanced tobacco control. China ratified the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2003 and enacted it in January 2006. Since then, health education campaigns have been carried out throughout China and relevant regulations have been revised in support of the FCTC goals. In 2009, the Ministry of Health (MOH), in collaboration with three other government partners, launched an initiative that establishes a tobacco-free health system. Working with the Ministry of Education, the MOH also established tobacco-free schools and, since then, smoke-free indoor spaces have gradually expanded.
Tobacco control was included in China’s 12th Five Year Plan. Some municipalities and big cities already have passed tobacco control legislation and the MOH also established a national hotline to promote smoking cessation. Since the launch four years ago of a continuous mass media campaign, more than 40,000 news stories on tobacco control have been published, which has greatly increased the public’s knowledge on the related harm of smoking.
A reinvigoration of national efforts has occurred in the U.S. as well. In 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled its first-ever national strategic plan for tobacco control entitled, “Ending the Tobacco Epidemic.” The strategic plan already has led to an unprecedented set of actions throughout HHS and the U.S. government which, in turn, have increased access to tobacco cessation services while decreasing workers’ exposure to second-hand smoke.
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