Note: World Lung Foundation united with The Union North America. From January 2016, the combined organization is known as “Vital Strategies.”
(May 31, 2015, Hanoi, Viet Nam and New York, USA) World Lung Foundation (WLF) today congratulated the Women’s Union, Youth Union and Farmers’ Union in Viet Nam on the launch of their new joint campaign to reduce the burden of second-hand smoke. The campaign will utilize each organization’s membership, traditional networks, social media and the vn0khoithuoc.com anti-tobacco website and Facebook page, developed with technical and financial support from WLF, to call for greater compliance with Viet Nam’s smokefree laws. In addition, WLF congratulated the Government of Viet Nam on the establishment of its new Tobacco Control Fund, funded by tobacco taxes and used to implement tobacco control measures that will help to reduce the prevalence and the health and economic burden of tobacco in the coming years.
Over 41 percent of men in Viet Nam are daily smokers while more than 98 percent of women are non-smokers, so women and children bear the greatest burden of harm as a result of exposure to second-hand smoke. In 2012, the Government of Viet Nam sought to dissuade youth from initiating smoking, encourage smokers to cut down or quit, and reduce the exposure of non-smokers to second-hand smoke by introducing smokefree laws covering healthcare facilities, universities, government facilities, indoor offices and restaurants. However, the ban did not extend to pubs and bars, public transportation and other indoor public places and there have been poor levels of compliance with and enforcement of the existing smokefree laws.
Sandra Mullin, Senior Vice President, Policy and Communications, World Lung Foundation, said: “High prevalence of tobacco use takes a terrible toll on smokers and non-smokers in Viet Nam, so it is exciting to see so many people from so many different groups coming together to effect change. We are delighted to help the Women’s Union, Youth Union, and Farmer’s Union to use the power of their memberships, their existing networks and social media to call on husbands and fathers to quit smoking. We also support these groups in their calls for the Government of Viet Nam to use the new Tobacco Control Fund to invest in reducing tobacco use and enforcing smokefree laws, and their calls for smokers and the managers and owners of restaurants and workplaces to comply with smokefree laws.
“The tobacco industry likes to claim that tobacco control policies are not politically popular in order to deter governments from enacting and enforcing regulation. The combination of so many organizations – led by the Women’s Union, Youth Union, and Farmer’s Union – shows that a significant proportion of Viet Nam’s citizens want to reduce the harm caused by tobacco. The message rings out loud and clear – the people of Viet Nam have had enough of tobacco damaging their health and financial wellbeing. Moreover, the Women’s Union’s leadership of this campaign is a great example of women fighting to protect their own health and the health of their children from the harms of tobacco. This campaign aims to effect behavioural change. We strongly encourage Viet Nam’s people to support the campaign and look forward to seeing the benefits of this initiative in the coming months and years.”
About Tobacco Use in Vietnam
Vietnam is one of the 15 low- and middle-income countries with the highest smoking rates in the world. According to The Tobacco Atlas, 41.2 percent of men, 1.6 percent of women, 5.9 percent of boys and 1.2 percent of girls in Viet Nam are daily smokers. This means that more than 120,000 children and more than 14,769,000 adults continue to use tobacco each day. An additional 1.3 percent of adults in Viet Nam – or 890, 100 people – currently use smokeless tobacco, which also causes disease and death. Most smokers report starting to smoke at a very early age, with 56 percent starting before the age of 20. The high smoking rate has caused huge health and economic losses for Vietnam. The Tobacco Atlas notes that tobacco is responsible for 22 percent of adult male deaths and 9.5 percent of adult female deaths – killing 72,800 people each year.
Research conducted in 2001 revealed that diseases and early deaths caused by smoking accounted for 12 percent of total diseases in Vietnam. The burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), of which smoking is the main cause, is increasing rapidly, from 42.6 percent of patients in 1976 to 71.6 percent in 2010. According to the World Health Organization, NCDs are responsible for 73 percent of total deaths caused by disease and injuries in Vietnam.
Vietnam has shown a strong commitment to tobacco control, through the ratification of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in 2004 and passage of comprehensive national tobacco control legislation in 2012. On January 25, 2013, the Vietnamese government approved the National Strategy on Tobacco Control to 2020, which calls for reductions in smoking among teens (from 26 percent to 18 percent), male adults (from 47.4 percent to 39 percent), and female adults (to less than 1.4 percent).