JUST TWO people in Tayside had their success in giving up smoking confirmed by a breath testing machine last year, according to a national report released yesterday, writes Marjory Inglis, health reporter.

NHS Tayside spends large sums of money providing services to help people stop smoking, with some of the cash spent on providing carbon monoxide monitors in doctors’ surgeries, community pharmacies and elsewhere.

People who smoke have carbon monoxide levels several times higher than a non-smoker who breathes in car exhaust fumes.

But a leading smoking cessation promoter and policy maker said he believed the recorded statistics did not reflect the actual number of successful breath tests.

Andrew Radley, lead pharmacist in NHS Tayside’s directorate of public health, was positive about the authority’s smoking cessation results in the wake of publication of the Scottish NHS Smoking Cessation Service Statistics.

The report stated that across the region 2934 attempts to quit smoking were made last year, a figure which could include multiple attempts to quit by individual smokers. The estimated smoking population in Tayside is nearly 79,000.

On the eve of the second anniversary of the Scottish smoking ban in public places, Mr Radley highlighted the numbers of people in Tayside remaining smoke free three months after setting a quit date and played down the results for the breath test validated quit attempts.

The report showed that 383 people in Tayside “self reported” that they had not smoked three months after setting a quit date.

“We did quite well with our three-month figures,” said Mr Radley, adding that there were plans to extend services further and increase the numbers of people stopping smoking.

“The three month quit rates varied across health boards between 0% and 28% and Tayside was 16%.”

Asked to explain the low figure of quit rates validated by carbon monoxide monitors, Mr Radley said the health authority would “have to improve on that” although he insisted he believed the recorded results did not represent a true picture of what was happening in Tayside.

“We think it is going on but not being reported that well,” Mr Radley said. “All those delivering smoking cessation services have been provided with carbon monoxide monitors. I am sure it is being done but the problem seems to be the results are not being reported (to the national data collectors).”

He warned the gathering of national statistics on smoking cessation was “a young system” with “anomalies” that still needed to be sorted out and should be read and interpreted with caution.

“Across Scotland the number of quit attempts went down by 11% in 2007 but in Tayside our quit attempts have increased by 862, an increase of 42%,” Mr Radley said.

He said the health authority had widened the availability of smoking cessation services beyond Dundee to the whole of Tayside. Community pharmacists had been “very enthusiastic” in providing services for people wanting to stop smoking.

Another reason why he thought Tayside had increasing numbers of quit attempts was because the health authority had “done lots of advertising” and persuaded more people than the year before to try to give up smoking.

“In Tayside we managed to get 3.7% of smokers to make a quit attempt in 2007, whereas in 2006 it was 2.6%.”

The highest success rates in Scotland among those trying to give up smoking were in the Forth Valley, Lanarkshire and Shetland NHS areas.

In Forth Valley 65% of those who tried to give up were still not smoking after one month and 28% were successful after three months.

In Lanarkshire 51% of quitters were not smoking after one month and 30% had not smoked after three months, while in Shetland 48% were still off after a month and 31% were successful after three months.

Public Health Minister Shona Robison urged all smokers to find out what help was available to assist them giving up their habit.

The Scottish Government recently committed an additional £33 million of funding over the next three years for smoking cessation services.

And the age at which people can buy tobacco has been raised from 16 to 18.

Ms Robison yesterday visited a smoking cessation service at Stirling Royal Infirmary’s maternity unit, which helps mothers-to-be give up.

She said a five-year action plan for tackling smoking would be published later this year. It will focus on discouraging young people in particular from taking up smoking.