London - Developing countries facing potentially pricey legal challenges from big tobacco firms are to get help from a new $4m fund created by the philanthropists Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg.
Announcing the creation of the anti-tobacco trade litigation fund on Wednesday, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said countries with limited resources should not be bullied into making bad health policy choices.
"This new fund is going to help countries who are sued by the tobacco industry fight back in court and win," Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York and one of the world's richest people, told reporters in a telebriefing.