PREFACE
Taiwan has long participated in the research of health issues and played a positive role in the field of tobacco control. Both public sectors and civil communities in Taiwan actively engage in tobacco control campaigns and adopting relevant measures for the controlling purposes. Being a member in the international community, we truly hope to devote ourselves and contribute to global tobacco control efforts.
We thought one way of contributing our efforts to the international community is to participate in the discussions and exchanges of views and experiences through different forms during the process of formulating and enacting protocols and guidelines by FCTC Conference of Parties. This manual is written against this background. It is a research product under the collaboration of Bureau of Health Promotion of the Department of Health and the Asian Center of WTO & International Health Law and Policy of National Taiwan University College of Law. Recommendations for COP2 documents provided here are made through an overall and thorough review of relevant documents.
After examining these documents, we thought that there are rooms to improve. We thus would like to share our observations about the templates and matters discussed in the documents. We would be happy if our observations are of help to the participants of COP2 in preparing, drafting and refining their documents and in formulating their strategies.
Finally, we would like to show our deep respect to the achievement of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and to the works that have been done up to this stage. We believe that tobacco control will be greatly enhanced and tobacco hazards will be eventually eliminated in the future with such join efforts from around the world.
Mei-Ling Hsiao, RPh., M.P.H.
Director-General,
Bureau of Health Promotion,
Department of Health, Taiwan
June 2007