The World Health Organization (WHO) is reviewing its policy on entities with which the WHO will not engage. At a December 15, 2014 Executive Board meeting on Boundaries: entities with which WHO will not engage, the WHO confirmed its policy not to engage with the tobacco and arms industries.
From March 30 to April 1, 2015, member states will discuss the proposed Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors at a WHO intergovernmental meeting. They will decide what proposals should be submitted to the World Health Assembly, which will take a final decision at its May 2015 meeting.
In a letter sent on March 9, Philip John Landrigan, member of the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City since 1985 and Chair of the Department of Preventive Medicine since 1990, and his co-signers request that the asbestos industry be put on the list of entities with which the WHO will not engage, along with the tobacco and the arms industries. They point out that all the reasons for refusing to engage with the tobacco industry apply to the asbestos industry.