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Fewer people quit smoking with help of pharmacists

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Fewer people quit smoking with help of pharmacists

The number of people who quit smoking using NHS Stop Smoking Services generally, and with support from pharmacists specifically, continues to decline, data from the Government Statistical Service suggests.

The number of people who set a quit date through NHS Stop Smoking Services between April 2015 and March 2016 fell for the fourth consecutive year to 382,500.

This is equivalent to decreases of 15 per cent compared to 2014/15 and 37 per cent compared to 2005/06.

The number of people who had successfully quit at the four-week follow-up based on self-reports also fell for the fourth consecutive year to 195,170, again equivalent to a decrease of 15 per cent compared to 2014/15. The successful quit rate remained about 51 per cent.

Data for pharmacists reflect these trends. In 2015/16, 75,444 people using pharmacist-led services set a quit data, an 11 per cent reduction on 2014/15, while the 34,871 people who quit in 2015/16 using pharmacy-led services was a 14 per cent reduction. Successful quit rates were 46 and 48 per cent in 2015/16 and 2014/15 respectively.

Healthcare professionals in England prescribed 1.2m items to aid smoking cessation in 2015/16 compared to 1.3m in 2014/15 (a 14 per cent reduction) and 2.2m in 2005/06 (a 48 per cent reduction).

The report speculates that the growing popularity of e-cigarettes might partly account for the declining use of NHS Stop Smoking Services.

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