Only about 3 to 5 percent of cigarette smokers successfully stop smoking on their own, but with help, that number can increase by more than five times, the Health Promotion Administration said on Sunday.
Relying on willpower alone is often not enough to stop smoking — choosing the right method is just as important, the agency said.
An average of about 20,000 people die of diseases associated with smoking each year in Taiwan, so to help people stop smoking, the agency launched a second-generation quit smoking program that expands the services from outpatient services to hospitals and community pharmacies.
People who use the program only have to pay 20 percent of the National Health Insurance copayment for medication prescribed by the doctors under the scheme, and Aborigines, low-income households and people living in mountainous areas or outlying islands do not have to pay for the medication, the administration said, adding that the relatively low costs have attracted more people who want to stop smoking.
A total of 3,501 healthcare facilities joined the program last year, and the six-month abstinence rate for people on the program has reached 26.4 percent, it said.
The administration said that the services adopted quality improvement measures in 2012, with facilities now following up on cases and providing better assistance, and with 1,469 facilities adopting the measures last year, the number of cases they assisted was 3.8 times that of other facilities.
Far Eastern Memorial Hospital’s Department of Family Medicine physician Chen Chih-dao (陳志道) said to encourage more people to stop smoking, the hospital also sends medical teams to companies that say they have a high number of people who smoke, to provide services in the workplace and follow-ups to ensure participants continue their efforts.
The Keelung Chang Gung Memorial Hospital established a specialized private “quit smoking” classroom, with full-time case management specialists that people can consult with, the administration said, adding that studies have shown that the longer the conversation, the better the effects are with about one-fifth of people stopping smoking after consulting with specialists for more than 15 minutes.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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