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World No Tobacco Day. SPIEF Business Agenda to Address Public Health Issues

31 May 2019

The World Health Organization (WHO) and its partners around the world mark World No Tobacco Day each year on 31 May. Over the past decade, premature mortality has declined and life expectancy has increased. This is primarily due to the successful implementation of public health programmes that aim to inform people about and motivate them to lead a healthy lifestyle.

“Over the past 10 years, Russia has had considerable success in increasing the life expectancy of the population. Back in the mid-2000s, we noted a sharp decline in life expectancy in the post-Soviet period in the report ‘Dying Young’. At the Second Russian Public Health Forum, which was held in Moscow on 17–18 October 2018, a group from the World Bank presented the results of recent estimates showing that life expectancy for men increased from 58 years in 2003 to 65.4 years in 2016 in the country. For women, this figure increased from 72 years in 2003 to 76.2 years in 2016. Effective measures to control tobacco and alcohol consumption, including increases in excise taxes on cigarettes, have played a significant role in the changes that have occurred”, said Patricio Marquez, Lead Health Specialist for Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice at the World Bank. 

Issues such as bridging the gap in healthcare accessibility in developed and developing nations, the possibility of creating an ideal and universal model of the public health system as well as innovative international practices will be key discussion topics at the session ‘The Architecture of Public Health: International Experience and National Priorities’ to be held at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The panellists include Veronika Skvortsova, Minister of Health of the Russian Federation; Julie Gerberding, Executive Vice President for Strategic Communications on the Global Public Policy and Population Health and Chief Patient Officer at MSD; Raul Alberto Gatika, Division Vice President for Government Affairs and Policy for Latin America, Europe, Russia and Turkey at Abbott; Patricio Marquez, Lead Health Specialist for Health, Nutrition and Population Global Practice at the World Bank, and Afshan Khan, Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), among others.


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