The Asia Pacific region has the highest number of tobacco consumption globally. With the economic and demographic growth, the region has become a crucial market and prime target for transnational tobacco industries on expanding business.
The rigorous marketing efforts of Tobacco Industry have brought concerns to health and development advocates in the region that led to the formation of Asia Pacific Association for Control of Tobacco (APACT).
On its twelveth organizations, APACT had a theme of ‘Tobacco Control for Sustainable Development: Ensuring a Healthy Generation’.
As today, tobacco control is not only recognized as the means of implementation to reach the overall health goal, but also to play an important role for the achievement of overall SDGs aspects. Hosted by The National Committee on Tobacco Control, The 12th Asia Pacific Conference on Tobacco or Health (APACT12th) was held in Bali, Indonesia, on 13 – 15 September 2018.
Ms Sukriti Jain, Sr Programme Officer, VHAI received a full scholarship to present oral and poster papers in this conference, capturing and sharing the experiences and learnings of the tobacco control projects in Jammu & Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. It was a wonderful opportunity to interact and learn from the over 300 delegates present in the conference.