WHO launches consortium to help people quit smoking

The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on November 5, 2021 the launch of a Consortium for stopping smoking, primarily aimed at low- and middle-income countries.

Access to care is a permanent issue in health issues; it also arises in terms of smoking cessation. Of the 1.3 billion smokers on the planet, only 30% have access to smoking cessation support systems. This observation led the WHO to set up, under its aegis, a consortium dedicated to smoking cessation in order to guarantee its accessibility to all, and more particularly to smokers in low- and middle-income countries.[1].

An organization dedicated to quitting smoking

The UN Tobacco Cessation Consortium, more simply called "the Consortium", should not only enable every tobacco smoker to learn about smoking cessation treatments, but also to access these treatments and advice based on scientific evidence.

Several potential activities are envisaged for this Consortium:

• Establish recognized and validated treatments for smoking cessation, namely nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), bupropion and varenicline.
• Raising funds from around the world to fuel smoking cessation activities.
• To serve as a platform and incubator for innovative solutions including digital technologies such as chat tools or search engines, by linking them to the mobile application “Be Healthy Be Mobile Initiative” developed by WHO and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
• Provide research and development avenues for nicotine addiction treatments.
• Serve as a knowledge platform for countries seeking resources and guidance to strengthen their tobacco cessation tools and services, by updating the list of essential treatments.
• Establish an investment program for smoking cessation.

An approach which requires the involvement of contributing countries

The establishment of this Consortium, however, requires significant investments from contributing countries, but which benefit from a significant return on investment. The WHO has thus defined an investment programme methodology allowing a country to assess its political and economic priorities, to analyse the overall cost of tobacco in the national economy and to estimate the costs and benefits of tobacco interventions. For example, the WHO has established that an investment of 1.68 $ per capita over a period of ten years can generate tens of millions of smoking cessations and save several million lives.

The establishment of the Consortium seems all the more relevant in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, where millions of smokers have become aware of their greater vulnerability to the virus and have wished to commit to a process of quitting smoking.

Keywords: smoking cessation, Consortium, WHO

©Tobacco Free Generation

M.F.