Sheffield: City's Shock Smoking Toll

Main Category: Smoking / Quit Smoking
Article Date: 02 Dec 2007 - 10:00 PDT

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If just 28 deaths from smoking related illness were prevented each year health services in Sheffield would be £1.6 million better off.

The figure has been calculated by health chiefs to show the huge financial benefits to the NHS of saving relatively few lives by persuading people to give up smoking.

In Sheffield, 1,200 people die prematurely each year from diseases caused by smoking, such as heart attacks, strokes and lung diseases including cancer.

John Soady, public health spokesman for Sheffield Primary Care Trust, which runs Sheffield Stop Smoking Service, said: "If 28 smoking related deaths are avoided each year there are savings of £1.6 million to Sheffield NHS."

But tackling smoking is a huge challenge, with as many as one in five of Sheffield's population currently believed to be addicted, the equivalent of around 110,000 people.

Getting the health message out about the dangers of smoking has had varying levels of success.

Rates of cigarette use vary across the city from just 13 per cent of the population in affluent Ecclesall, to as high as 40 per cent of residents in the deprived area of Woodside, Burngreave.

Additional free quit smoking programmes are taking place in areas where levels of cigarette use are higher and in convenient locations such as GP surgeries, pharmacies and leisure centres. .

Smokers who give up save the NHS as much as £800 per year in medical treatment.

http://www.ash.org.uk