More smokers in the UK are deciding to say: “I quit” than ever before, according to latest research.
The recent figures on smoking in the UK follow a concerted Government/NHS campaign in recent years: combining online, print, TV and radio advertising aiming to encourage smokers to safeguard their health – by giving up cigarettes with the aid of free NHS Stop Smoking Services.
The latest official health survey statistics show that the stop smoking campaign is already starting to create tangible results.
Not only are more smokers than ever making use of free NHS Stop Smoking Services to help them quit smoking for good, more than ever before they are seeing the results they wanted, the transformation from smoker into ex-smoker.
In the year to March 2010, 757,537 people set a quit smoking date through NHS Stop Smoking Services, a 13 per cent increase on the previous year.
After four weeks, 373,954 people managed to successfully quit, 11 per cent more than in the previous year. The information comes from the new NHS Information Centre: Statistics on Smoking England, 2010.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley explains:
“Smoking is the biggest preventable cause of death in England. NHS doctors, nurses and health professionals in local Stop Smoking Services are dedicated to tackling smoking. It’s because of their excellent work that more people than ever have successfully quit.
“Over fifty years, we have halved the proportion of adults who smoked – but some other countries have lower smoking prevalence than this – so we should go even further and reduce the numbers who smoke.
“With smoking causing so many avoidable deaths and hospital admissions it is important people take up the offers of support available.”
The encouraging figures show that more and more smokers are really trying to kick the habit as more awareness of the dangers of smoking emerges, especially lung cancer, and it becomes seen to be, controversially to some, an increasingly anti-social habit.
However, smokers who have smoked over their lifetime – and are more dependent on nicotine – are the NHS’s next target, but are proving the hardest to reach.
Smoking remains the biggest preventable cause of death in the UK.
The Government is now reviewing how best to go on tackling the issue and encourage more people to quit. But the Government figures show that it is those hardened smokers who are the most stubborn.
The NHS is now looking at innovative ways of helping these smokers, such as treatment centres like the one at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust which has teamed up with local partners to set up a stop smoking service on site, encouraging patients (and staff) in the hospital to stop smoking.
Staff at the hospital learn about the role smoking plays in the diseases they treat and the short and long-term effect it has on their patients, then carry out a ‘mini intervention’ with patients. The scheme is already having an impact: more than half – 53 per cent – of staff who have been on the programme have successfully quit and similar success is being seen with patients.
Anyone who is interested in stopping smoking or taking advantage of any of the schemes available can call 0800 1 690 169 to find their local Stop Smoking Service. Up-to-date information on smoking statistics can be found at the NHS website: www.ic.nhs.uk.
