There is plenty of scientific evidence to show that tobacco kills one out of every two of its users (as per the WHO). Tobacco use devastates lives and fractures families killing over 8 million people every year – year after year. While governments are enforcing stronger evidence-based tobacco control measures, the tobacco industry is conniving to lure children and young people into addiction traps and reap bigger profits by selling its deadly products.

Akin to the oft-quoted proverb “When the going gets tough, the tough get going”, Dr Tara Singh Bam has painstakingly advanced tobacco control in Indonesia and other countries in Asia and the Pacific for over almost two decades now – despite mammoth tobacco industry interference in public health policy.

Indonesian Ministry of Health awarded him on 4th June 2024 to shine a spotlight on his stellar contributions to advance tobacco control and public health in Indonesia over the past 17 years. Dr Tara Singh Bam received the award certificate from Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, who appealed to the children and young people to make the smart choice of choosing life, and not tobacco.

Although Indonesia is not among the 183 countries that have ratified the global tobacco treaty (formally called the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control – WHO FCTC), Dr Tara Singh Bam has played a phenomenal role in mobilizing sub-national leaders in Indonesia and several other countries to adapt and enforce WHO-recommended evidence-backed tobacco control policies –........

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