Spokesman Report<\/p>\n
Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013 The World Health Organization (WHO) has jointly awarded the World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) 2026 Award to the Tobacco Control Cell of Pakistan\u2019s Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination and Dr. Waseem Iftikhar Janjua, Senior Researcher at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The WNTD Award is presented annually to individuals or organizations from each of the six WHO Regions in recognition of their outstanding contributions to tobacco control.<\/p>\n
The full list of this year\u2019s award recipients is available on WHO\u2019s website. <\/u>\u00a0<\/b><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n In Pakistan, tobacco causes an estimated 164,000 deaths and economic losses of over PKR 1,800 billion (around US$6.6 billion) each year. WHO warns that children and youth are particularly exposed to and targeted by the tobacco and nicotine industries, which design their products to get young people stuck in a cycle of addiction.<\/p>\n Pakistan ratified the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC)\u00a0in 2004, and WHO provides continuous technical support to the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination and the Federal Board of Revenue in areas such as tobacco tax policy and track-and-trace implementation<\/p>\n Since 2014, under the umbrella of WHO\u2019s FCTC, Pakistan has implemented key policy changes to reduce tobacco consumption, including a 208% increase in tobacco taxation during the fiscal year 2022\u20132023 (which remained unchanged in subsequent years); larger pictorial health warnings on tobacco packaging; a ban on the sale of loose cigarettes nationwide; the National Tobacco Control Strategy 2022\u20132030; and the establishment of provincial Tobacco Control Cells and Implementation and Monitoring Committees, among others.<\/p>\n Extensive scientific evidence confirms that all tobacco and nicotine products on the market \u2013 including licit and illicit products, and items such as e-cigarettes or nicotine patches \u2013 are extremely harmful to health and pose a major risk to vulnerable populations such as children and teenagers.<\/p>\n Tobacco kills up to half of its users who don\u2019t quit. A leading cause of preventable death, it causes cardiovascular and lung disease, strokes, and multiple cancers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Spokesman Report Islamabad, Pakistan \u2013 The World Health Organization (WHO) has jointly awarded the World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) 2026 Award to the Tobacco Control Cell of Pakistan\u2019s Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination and Dr. Waseem Iftikhar Janjua, Senior Researcher at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), Pakistan. The WNTD Award is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[495,993],"class_list":["post-63417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-national","tag-world-health-organization-who","tag-world-no-tobacco-day-2026-award"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63419,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63417\/revisions\/63419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyspokesman.net\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}