With around two thirds of smokers saying they want to quit, around 1m people nationally are expected to use National No Smoking Day 2011 to kick start their giving up campaign.
And the message for those people in Blackburn with Darwen is: ‘help is out there!’
NHS Blackburn with Darwen Teaching Care Trust Plus has changed the way smoking cessation is delivered in order to offer a more accessible and cost effective service with better results.
The service is now offered via four community pharmacists who have been trained and are already providing specialist one to one support, advice and healthy lifestyle information.
One of those, Zafar Iqbal, 50, provides the service through his Aston Pharmacy, on Accrington Road, Blackburn as well as Darwen Health Centre.
Zafar, like the other three community pharmacists, is fully qualified having undertaken a level 3 smoking cessation course at UCLAN.
He said: "We’ve been offering the service since October 2010. At the moment we dedicate two days a week to new patients through the pharmacy. People are referred via their GP, or through self-referral. I see all our new patients.
My staff then do the follow-ups so people can come back whenever they want. It works nicely for us.
"We’ll look at behavioural support, why the person smokes; we’ll get a full history from them and then come up with a programme that is tailored specifically to them. The type of treatment depends entirely upon the individual. There is whole range available. We offer nicotine replacement therapy as well as prescription medication such as Champix (varenicline.)
"We see the patients initially every week for the first three or four weeks and then once we know we’ve got them where they need to be then we’ll start seeing them every two weeks. Generally speaking we give people up to twelve weeks’ treatment. The success rate so far has been very good."
One of the people Zafar has helped to give up smoking is Darwen man, Kirk Smith. The twenty two year-old has given up for over six weeks using nicotine replacement therapy.
It is planned to roll the service out further by training pharmacists and GPs across the borough in order to make it as accessible as possible for people determined to quit.
If you live in Blackburn with Darwen and want to stop smoking, you can get one to one support, advice, information and nicotine replacement therapy from Zafar and three other local community pharmacists.
Full details are available from Zafar Iqbal, 95 Accrington Road, Blackburn tel (01254) 680133, Omran Majeed, 63 Whalley Range, Blackburn, tel (01254) 665941, Iqbal Khazi, 1 Whalley Range, Blackburn, tel (01254) 54988, Moshin Patel, 4 Court Pharmacy, Blackburn, tel (01254) 677447 or phone Blackburn with Darwen Care Trust Plus, tel (01254) 282131
