The number of new AIDS cases is expected to rise steeply over the next five years, with between 500,000 and three million new cases. From World Health Organization Features . The tobacco industry is alive and well in Ghana, even if its consumers are coughing their way to the grave. Government regulation of cigarette advertising by multinational tobacco corporations, according to a Canadian visitor writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail, is almost non-existent. International Monetary Fund inspired cutbacks in government spending and encouragement of private enterprise mean that road signs, speed limits and town signs have a cigarette brand name incorporated into them.
Nurses wear wristwatches with cigarette brands on the face.
In the city of Tamale a British tobacco firm sponsored a teenage dance. From correspondence received . In the Third World, the prospect of a fast cash return from a tobacco crop can be irresistible to poor farmers. It is equally irresistible to their governments. Taxes on cigarettes accounted in 1980 for 47 per cent of government income in the Philippines.