The challenge is to use a North American phrase, we must get doctors and nurses to walk the talk. A relatively underdeveloped control strategy is a provision of practical sustainable economical alternative to tobacco farming. This is important because the claim that tobacco earns vital hard currency for developing countries is probably responsible for more political doors closing on tobacco control policies than any other. Tobacco of course represents not wealth, but poverty and ill health for the African continent. It impoverishes both individuals and national economies.
People living in dire poverty, spend money on tobacco instead of buying food.
While countries with massive foreign deaths spend valuable hard currency on tobacco imports. In 1990, food and agricultural organization report noted, that by the year 2000, developing countries will be consuming all the tobacco they produce. So that export availability from this group will fall to nothing. Some developing countries like Malavia and Zimbabwe, do earn substantial amounts from tobacco. The fledgling New Democratic Government in Malavia, has been advised to reduced it reliance on tobacco, but Malavia will be unable to make this transition away from tobacco, without assistance from the international community.