Smoking ‘the NHS’s biggest headache’

Smoking-related conditions are the biggest strain on the NHS, it has been claimed.

According to Bryan Stoten, chair of the NHS Confederation, attempting to reduce the number of smokers in the UK is the biggest challenge facing the health service in the future.

He has now called for all political parties to support proposals on how to tackle the issue.

Related conditions are responsible for people taking days off work, while the high cost of treatment is hindering the country’s health service, he explained.

“What is needed is nothing less than a society-wide effort to educate, persuade and prompt people to either give up smoking, or better still, not to take the habit up in the first place,” Mr Stoten concluded.

This news comes after research from the University of Birmingham last month found that smokers diagnosed with lung cancer who quit the habit early on in their treatment were twice as likely to survive than those who kept up the habit.