Collaboration and Partnerships

The success of the Tobacco Free Initiative lies on effective collaboration and building partnerships to act against the tobacco epidemic. In this regard, TFI/SEARO attempts to strengthen its collaboration with member countries, professional, government and non-governmental organizations and collaborating centres.

Regional Office for South-East Asia in partnership with Member Countries is a unique example of a joint and coordinated fight against tobacco. Member countries contributed significantly to the establishment of TFI at Regional Office for South-East Asia and worked together to develop regional programmes on tobacco control.

Regional Office for South-East Asia is also taking the opportunity to utilise the existing Memorandum of Understandings with ASEAN and SAARC to advance the tobacco control agenda through these inter-governmental organisations.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) Atlanta has been a close partner, in particular in the area of tobacco surveillance. This partnership would be strengthened as the WHO FCTC starts to get implemented in the countries.

NGOs are another important partner for Regional Office for South-East Asia in the fight against the tobacco epidemic. NGOs have been supported to play an important in the WHO FCTC process. This support has also contributed to their growth and strengthening of their capacity. Being important partners, NGOs have been involved in advocacy, awareness creation and research for tobacco control.

Regional Office for South-East Asia’s partnership with WHO Collaborating Centres deserves to be mentioned. These centres have played an important role in the area of surveillance. In the future, the relationship between Regional Office for South-East Asia and WHO Collaborating Centres would be strengthened and more and more suitable centres would be identified for designation as WHO Collaborating Centres for tobacco control.

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