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Fewer people are using NHS stop smoking services in the North East new figures reveal.

Latest information from the Health and Social Care Information Centre claims 13,097 people in the area signed up for the NHS Stop Smoking service in 2014-15.

This is a 31.7 per cent decrease compared to the 19,164 people who signed up for the service in 2013-14.

Gateshead observed the biggest fall for any local authority in the area with numbers down by 41 per cent. This was also the tenth biggest fall nationwide.

Both of these figures are well below the fall of 23 per cent observed nationally.

The HSCIC suggests this fall may be due to an increase in people using e-cigarettes to help them stop smoking rather than making use of these services but that it is possible that a fall in smoking prevalence may also be a factor.

An independent review published this week by Public Health England (PHE) concluded electronic cigarettes are significantly less harmful to health than tobacco and have the potential to help tens of thousands of smokers in the region quit.

The North East has become the first region where all local stop smoking services are actively promoted as ‘e-cigarette friendly’.

All current evidence finds that e-cigarettes carry a fraction of the risk of smoking. And evidence suggests some of the highest successful quit rates are now seen among smokers who use an e-cigarette.

The success rate of the Stop Smoking NHS service in Tyne and Wear also went down last year with 44.8 per cent of people saying they had managed to quit by their target date. This was a 3.8 percentage point drop on 2013-14.

After a person reports that they have been able to stop smoking a carbon monoxide test is carried out on them to monitor the level of tobacco in their bloodstream and confirm that they have, in fact, stopped.

As many as 84.9 per cent of people who said they had stopped passed this test, however, it may not have been possible to test all the people who claimed to have stopped so this number is likely to be higher in reality.

Across the whole of England 586,337 people used an NHS Stop Smoking service in 2014-15, down by 23 per cent compared with the previous year.

Of these people 51.3 per cent reported having successfully stopped smoking by their target date while 70.1 per cent of these subsequently went on to pass the carbon monoxide test.

Martyn Willmore, performance improvement delivery manager for Fresh, said: “The figures show that the number of smokers using North East Stop Smoking Services in 2014/15 fell by 31% on the previous year, and fell by 23% nationally, but the North East still sees a larger proportion of its adult population using local Stop Smoking Services than any other region in England.

“There are a number of reasons for the decline. One is that more smokers are turning to electronic cigarettes rather than stop smoking services, although every service in the North East is now e-cig friendly and can offer support and quit coaching to smokers using these products. We hope this will help to address the decline longer term by reassuring smokers who want to try electronic cigarettes as a way of quitting, but who also understand that behavioural support will increase their chances of quitting, that they will be welcome within their local stop smoking service.

“We have also seen the North East suffer badly during the recession and we know worry and stress can play a role in undermining quitting. There is also less concerted all year round promotion about stop smoking services, and not every service across the country or in the North East offers the same service to smokers in each local area.

“It is really important that moving forward we make quitting smoking the main priority, but that smokers who want to use stop smoking support know exactly where they can access the best type of help.”

LOCAL AUTHORITY FIGURES FOR STOP SMOKING SERVICES

Area // Participants 2013-14 // Participants 2014-15 // % Change

Gateshead // 4,100 // 2,417 // -41.0%

Sunderland // 6,222 // 4,140 // -33.5%

South Tyneside // 3,739 // 2,541 // -32.0%

North Tyneside // 2,302 // 1,749 // -24.0%

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne // 2,801 // 2,250 // -19.7%