Below is her report of this ceremony that took place in Mauritius on August 2d. All her congratulations, Véronique. Here is a link to her acceptance speech for a tobacco-free Mauritius.
Dear friends,
Allow me to share with you a report of the ceremony of the WHO Director General Special Award confered to me on the occasion of the World No Tobacco day 2010, and that took place on the 2nd of August 2010 in Mauritius.
The award ceremony was indeed a big success. The venue was the conference room of the very chic Labourdonnais Hotel in the capital. The local bureau of WHO and ministry's staff attended the event as well as Heart, Cancer and other NGOs, media representatives, the ViSa team and my family. The Minister, honourable Maya Hanoomanjee reiterated her will to make Mauritius tobacco free. I was quite moved by the additional ward given to me by the Ministry of Health itself. I thanked the Minister and Dr. Munbodh the director of WHO-Mauritius for their kind words, and specially M. Mohee from WHO-Mauritius with whom ViSa closely collaborated and still does. In my speech of thanks, I stressed the fact that 96% of non smokers and 85% of smokers in Mauritius wish to ban the sale of tobacco products in our country, according to the ITC survey 2010.
There is already a good media coverage of the event- Radios in prime time and news, and newspapers. (See documents attached). I think we can expect further more to come. This event is of course an excellent opportunity for further sensitizing the public on the fight against the tobacco industry (and no more tobacco "control" !) It seems that we are progressing rapidly towards a tobacco free society in Mauritius. We'll have to keep up to our goal and reputation.
This recognition is also a tribute to the work of the whole community of anti tobacco advocates throughout the world, as no man is an island !
Best,
Véronique
Véronique LE CLEZIO
President of ViSa
2, John Kennedy avenue
Floréal
Mauritius
Tel: (230) 698 3258
Fax: (230) 686 4498
http://www.veronique-leclezio.
http://blogsofbainbridge.
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