Warning over stop-smoking funding cuts in Shropshire
The director of a health initiative is urging Shropshire Council not to cut its budget to deliver stop-smoking services.
The authority is proposing a £4 million reduction in public health spending, which puts the Help2Change services at risk.
Run by Shropshire Council, the project delivers the statutory NHS health check as well as a range of non-statutory prevention services, including the Help2Quit stop smoking scheme.
Help2Change has already committed to savings totalling £1.2m, and has put forward additional proposals, that if accepted, would reduce its total budget to £0.6m per year by 2021/22.
But director Kevin Lewis has said it would mean ending all non-statutory services.
In a report that will go before Shropshire Council's health and adult social care committee next Monday, Dr Lewis said stopping the Help2Quit service would pose a significant risk to population health, widen health inequalities and increase overall social care costs.
Impact
Help2Quit treated 2,836 clients in 2017/18, achieving a 46 per cent quit rate against the national target of 35 per cent.
Dr Lewis said: "The loss of Help2Quit would have a significant adverse impact on population health, increasing the number of people living with disabling illness and adding to social care costs. It would also increase the risk of harm to babies born to mothers who smoke.
"Stop-smoking services are proven to offer the most effective form of smoking cessation support and are highly cost effective."
There is still 39,000 smokers recorded on GP registers in Shropshire, and smokers using Help2Quit are four times more likely to be successful than if they try to quit alone, according to Dr Lewis.
The report also revealed the cost to adult social care of smoking-related illness in Shropshire is estimated at £8.26m per year.
Campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) says the number of people using similar services is declining because of the popularity of e-cigarettes as an aid to quitting.
