| Summary: | Background
In 2008, the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced a package of measures including 6 main policies (MPOWER) to control tobacco use. Our aim was to perform a quantitative analysis of MPOWER in the 6 WHO regions.
Methods
This cross-sectional study collected information in summer 2019 using pages 136–149 of the WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic 2019 and a validated checklist with 10 criteria (6 policies plus 1, 2 compliance and 1 prevalence), included in the report of each country, a 0–4 point scale was used for scoring the 5-item criteria, and a 0–3 point scale was used for scoring the 4-item criteria. The possible maximum score was 37. The scores were summed and presented in descending order for the 6 WHO regions.
Results
The highest mean score was recorded by the European Region (26.41), followed by: South-East Asia Region (25), Western Pacific Region (24.88), Region of the Americas (22.05), Eastern Mediterranean Region (21.40) and African Region (17.40). There was a significant difference (p<0.05) for means in this regard.
Conclusions
Although many efforts on tobacco control have been made, many challenges to policy implementation and enforcement remain needed for regions and Eastern Mediterranean and African regions require urgent action by governments to reach the best status.
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