Materia Medica Malaysiana

Get all the help to quit smoking

Comprehensive support is given under the Health Ministry's free quit-smoking programme for those who want to stop smoking.
“Just turn up and we’ll help you. The clinics will provide whatever is required to help a smoker quit, be it counselling and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or just counselling,” said the ministry’s public health deputy director of Kuala Lumpur, Dr Sallehudin Abu Bakar.
He added that doctors were also available at any time if a smoker needed phone counselling.
“The doctors will give their numbers to patients should they need immediate support. Quit clinics are located in hospitals and various polyclinics,” he said.
He added that a quit line for any smoker who wanted phone counselling was in the pipeline.
Dr Sallehudin also said that for mild cases of smoking addiction, counselling alone would be used as it was more cost effective.
“We only treat clients experiencing heavy addiction with both counselling and NRT,” he said when met at the Malaysian Conference on Tobacco Control 2005 here yesterday.
Dr Sallehudin said the clinics would prescribe different types of NRT such as nicotine chewing gum, nicotine patches or inhalers.
“Each type of NRT has different levels of effectiveness depending on the individual. Some individuals have a strong urge to smoke, and in this instance, patches are better.
Whereas for those with occasional urges, the chewing gum is better,” he added.
He said each piece of chewing gum cost RM1 and in the early stages of treatment, a patient would be taking six to eight pieces of gum a day.
Dr Sallehudin also said that patients would have to attend weekly 30-minute counselling sessions during the first month.
In the second and third months, clients would have to attend such sessions twice a week.
However, from the fourth month to sixth month, the NRT treatment is discontinued and patients will only have to go for counselling once a month.
He added that the cost of NRT treatment for each patient in the programme was between RM1,000 and RM1,500.