Pakistan

Vital Strategies and Pakistan's Ministry of Health executed a vast advocacy campaign across several years to highlight the problem with point-of-sale marketing.

It is entirely unacceptable that every year 1.6 million people die from a disease that we have been able to treat since the 1940s. In developed nations, tuberculosis has nearly been eradicated, but in low- and middle-income countries, TB remains the leading infectious killer.

The campaign graphically shows the many harmful illnesses caused by tobacco use, including lung cancer, heart disease, stroke and oral cancers, and calls on smokers to quit.

A powerful national mass media campaign to show the deadly harm of tobacco - and encourage smokers to quit - has launched in Pakistan.

Pakistan has a high number of smokers of both manufactured cigarettes and hand-rolled bidis - 27.9% of men and 5.4% of women - and a growing smokeless tobacco trend.