Alcohol Included in Norwegian Poverty Action Plan

Prior to the release of the Norwegian Governments Action Plan for Combating Poverty in the South Towards 2015 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited the NGOs to contribute their points towards completing the plan. FORUT suggested to include alcohol as an aspect of poverty and development in the report.

In the chapter "The Greatest Challenges" under the headline "Investments.." the report reads: "The report of the WHO Commission on Macroeconomics and Health has pointed out that a few diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, Childrens diseases, diseases related to pregnancy and childbirth, new-born infant diseases and tobacco related diseases, are responsible for most of the poor health in the world. Alcohol abuse also poses a major problem in poor countries." (Our italics).

"National Health programmes should focus on efforts to reduce tobacco consumption and alcohol abuse" is on of the bullet points in the Action Plan itself.

The Action Plan may be downloaded from the official web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Fighting Poverty, Action Plan