Knowledgeable and skilled human resources and effective multi-sectoral collaboration at different levels of government and society are necessary for effective development and implementation of a wide range of tobacco control activities. To this end, the WHO FCTC requires Parties to establish or reinforce and finance a national coordinating mechanism or focal point in order to develop, implement, periodically update, and review comprehensive multi-sectoral national tobacco control strategies, plans and programmes (Articles 5.1 and 5.2).

Generally many countries still lack the necessary structural, human, financial, and technical resources to implement cost-effective and sustainable tobacco control programmes. Few national governments in ASEAN have a sufficient number of staff working full-time on tobacco control. Both Singapore and Thailand have strong tobacco control policies in place with support from a significant number of national level tobacco control staff, while other countries in the region need to build national capacity (human, financial, and technical) to carry out effective and sustainable tobacco control programmes to combat the tobacco epidemic.

Human resource for tobacco control in ASEANClick to enlarge

In many countries tobacco control is often not a national priority. Consequently, domestic resources for WHO FCTC implementation are far from secure and must compete with other programmes for government funding. An effective way to address this is the introduction of dedicated surcharge taxes on tobacco and alcohol, which can aid in reducing consumption of these harmful products and, more importantly, provide a more secure funding stream for health promotion and tobacco control programmes.

Four out of ten ASEAN countries have established health promotion or tobacco control funds through surcharged taxes (Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam) and treasury budget (Singapore).