Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates Launch $4 Million Anti-Tobacco Legal Fund
Billionaire philanthropists Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, on Wednesday, have launched a $4 million joint fund in Abu Dhabi to help the developing countries get tobacco-control laws passed in their legal battle with industry giants.
The announcement came on the second day of the 16th World Conference on Tobacco or Health. Bloomberg has granted the governments and NGOs in Brazil, Nepal, Philippines, Russia, Ukraine and Uruguay his Philanthropies Awards for Global Tobacco Control for the important strides that they have made in executing tobacco control policies.
Out of these, Uruguay was the first country in Latin America that banned smoking in public spaces, a measure enacted in 2006.
The creators of the Anti-Tobacco Trade Litigation Fund, supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said their aim is to combat the use of international trade agreements by the tobacco industry's, to threaten and prevent countries from passing strong tobacco-control laws.
The former Mayor of New York, Bloomberg, said, “We are at a critical moment in the global effort to reduce tobacco use, because the significant gains we have seen are at risk of being undermined by the tobacco industry's use of trade agreements and litigation”.
He added that they will support the nations that are willing to work for the protection of their populations against the deadly health effects of tobacco use.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said that the country leaders who are taking steps for the protection of their citizens from the ills of tobacco should not get deterred by any kind of threats of costly legal challenges from huge tobacco companies.
The World Health Organization has given the warning that although the smoker numbers have shown a decline in many parts of the world, yet the upward trends in African and Mediterranean countries have indicated that the global total will not change much in the next 10 years.
The organization mentioned that about 80% of the world's one billion smokers belong to low- and middle-income countries.