It has never been more important than now for people to stop smoking. The World Health Organisation (WHO) and Public Health England (PHE) are citing smokers to be likely to be more vulnerable to COVID 19 for multiple reasons including:

• the act of smoking means that fingers are in contact with the lips which increases the risk of transmitting the disease from hand to mouth
• Smokers lung capacity will already be reduced and therefore will be more at risk of serious illness

Smokefree Sefton Specialist Stop Smoking Service continues to help smokers to quit during this difficult time.

Colette Kearney, Service Manager, explains: “To protect our clients we are unable to offer face-to-face support. However, all our staff are continuing to support clients weekly by telephone six days a week including evenings and at times to suit clients.

“In addition, motivational text messages will be sent between telephone calls to help clients. ”

The 12 weeks of support the service offers includes nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) which will be free to all and securely posted or directly delivered to the client. Other prescribed stop smoking medication will be sourced from the client’s GP as appropriate.

Pregnant women will continue to be supported by the service’s Specialist Pregnancy advisor.

To contact Smokefree Sefton, ring 0300 100 1000.