Tuesday 16 August 2011

Stopping Smoking Report

I felt I just had to copy and paste a piece I read on AOL today about the number of people trying - and succeeding in stopping smoking with the NHS.

Here it is I've added my own comments in red!:
"The number of people trying to quit smoking via NHS services has roughly trebled in the last decade but success rates have fallen, figures show. Well my success rates have stayed around the 95% stop and stay stopped mark!
In 2010/11, there were almost 788,000 "quit dates" set with NHS stop smoking services, with almost 384,000 successful attempts. In 2001/02, there were just 227,000 quit dates set and fewer than 120,000 successful attempts.
People may be successful on their first try, or can set further quit dates throughout the year if their first attempt fails. Maybe they should stop "trying" and just do it!
The overall success rate is now 49%, the same as the previous year, but down on the 53% recorded in 2001/02, according to the data from the NHS Information Centre. People are counted as successful quitters if they are still not smoking four weeks after their quit date. Four weeks? We tested for up to 6 months and I get letters from clients years later!The new report showed the total amount spent on England's NHS stop smoking services in 2010/11 was £84.3 million, almost £500,000 more than in the previous year and almost £60 million more than a decade ago. That's tax payers money they're spending! If you're not a smoker you may be a little incensed! That's £219.53 for each person who stopped.

With patches having a 16% success rate and Champix and Zyban coming in at about 24% when will the government realise that their methods are not working? A 49% success rate is less than 50:50 and that's luck!
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