While the country recently celebrated the coming of the New Year, the Stockport NHS Foundation Trust CURE team were celebrating another big landmark – 300 lives saved since they began their work five years ago.

The new figures come from the research which has gone into the Tobacco Dependence Treatment Services Impact Calculator from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). This analysis shows for every 1000 patients a specialist stop smoking team sees, approximately 60 lives will be saved.

With the Stockport CURE team seeing over 5000 patients since 2020, this brings us to 300 lives saved. It’s also estimated that CURE team’s actions last year alone have saved 113 re-admissions to the hospital.

The Stockport CURE team are the local branch of Greater Manchester`s `Treating Tobacco Dependency` program. TTD teams aim to ensures all active smokers admitted to hospital are immediately offered specialist support from the stop smoking team, together with nicotine replacement therapy and other medications for the duration of their admission, and after discharge too.

Natasha Gilraine, CURE Associate Respiratory Nurse Specialist said;  “Tobacco is the single greatest cause of preventable death, disability, illness and social inequality both the local area and the world. In helping people to give up smoking we can make a real impact on improving our local population’s health. The whole team are both delighted and proud to reflect on the number of lives saved, and we look forward to continuing to do so.

For more information on CURE visit https://thecureproject.co.uk/ 

Many people take the opportunity of the new year to give up smoking. For more information about stopping smoking and free support visit www.makesmokinghistory.co.uk