Representatives from the World Health Organization's Member States and nongovernmental organizations meet in Geneva today to begin work on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world's first multilaterally negotiated public health treaty that aims to reduce the global use of tobacco and thereby reduce tobacco-related deaths in the next century. The working group will establish the technical and scientific foundation for Ministerial negotiations scheduled to begin next year. The FCTC is scheduled to be open for signature in 2003.

"I urge the world's leaders to take those decisions necessary to protect future generations from an entirely avoidable cause of disease and death," said WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland. ''We have a formidable challenge ahead of us, but together we can give the world a policy tool with which to control tobacco,'' she added.

Tobacco kills 4 million people per year. The Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI), WHO's tobacco control programme, estimates that if unchecked, this silent epidemic could kill 10 million by 2030, over seventy percent of them in the developing world. The world counts 1.2 billion smokers today and if new actions are not introduced that figure could rise to 1.6 billion, also in the first quarter of the next century.

WHO's tobacco control programme got a shot in the arm last May when its governing body, the 191-member World Health Assembly, unanimously backed a resolution calling for work to begin on the FCTC. This is the first time in its 50-year history that WHO is exercising its constitutional mandate to negotiate a Convention.

For further information, journalists can contact Gregory Hartl, Office of Press and Public Relations, WHO, Geneva. Telephone (41 22) 791 44 58. Fax (41 22) 791 48 58. E-Mail: hartlg@who.int