Smoking cessation drug therapies SEPAR, asks for Spain’s government to finance Them

Ruiz said that smoking is a habit, but also a chronic illness, and recalled that nicotine is more addictive than heroin

Smoking cessation drug therapies SEPAR, asks for Spain’s government to finance Them
The president of the Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR), Juan Ruiz Manzano, asked that the state to finance drug therapies for smoking cessation in all the autonomous communities, during the presentation of a consensus document from the Coalition of Citizens with Chronic Illness.

Ruiz said that smoking is a habit, but also a chronic illness, and recalled that nicotine is more addictive than heroin. This is an "alarming and priority," problem he said, because it affects 30% of the population over 16 years old and is the leading cause of preventable death in the country - cause 54,000 deaths a year.

The coordinator of the Smoking of Separ, Carlos Jimenez said that pharmacological treatments for smoking cessation are "effective, safe, and cost-effective." In this sense, he explained that a treatment - which takes about three months and costs 241 euros - increases the likelihood of success to 5% to 40%, and regretted that only 4% of smokers who trying to quit smoking receive the proper medical treatment.

He estimated that up to 20% of smokers can encouraged to give up if they received funding to purchase nicotine substitutes like gum and patches, or tablets of bupropion and varenicline. For now, Catalunya has targeted financing schemes aimed at studies or pilot programs carried out in some health centres.

The funding of treatments depends on the state government: a few funding programs have wide coverage - Madrid, Navarra and La Rioja -, others are highly selective programs - Catalonia, Andalusia, Ceuta, Castilla-La Mancha, Melilla Galicia and Murcia - and as many have none - Valencia, Aragon, Castilla y Leon, Cantabria, Asturias and Euskadi -.

About the ROI, Jimenez said that the National Health System spent 3.919 million euros in 2003 to care for those affected by the six main diseases associated with smoking - asthma, heart disease, lung cancer, low birth weight , stroke and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He added that spending actually triples if one takes into account the indirect costs such as lost productivity, absenteeism and life insurance payments, and that tobacco tax collection in the same year reached 5.525 million euros. Between 75% and 90% of the investment, according to a recent study, could be recovered within ten years.



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