Smoking: Pfizer campaign with testimonial Ranieri, stop with the help of a professional

Rome, April 7 (beraking latest news Salute) – Two teams of ‘Sunday footballers’ chasing the ball on a suburban pitch. A star of international football, the coach Claudio Ranieri, who intervenes by motivating them and helping them to give their best, to play better and reach the goal: scoring goals. The help of a professional can make a difference: this is the message of the new campaign on smoking cessation promoted in 11 countries by Pfizer through the Cigaretteless website, which collects information and useful tools to quit smoking.

The video starring coach Claudio Ranieri invites those who want to quit smoking to contact an anti-smoking center, thus tripling the chances of being able to reach the goal. What many people who decided to stop cigarettes do not know, in fact, is that they can count on the support of over 290 anti-smoking centers active in Italy, where a team made up of doctors, psychologists, nurses and other specialized figures can follow step by step. step the smoker in the path of quitting smoking.

“The main objective of the Anti-Smoking Centers is to break the loneliness of the smoker and help him to prune himself from a series of poor knowledge, from disinformation, or even worse from fake news that help build alibis that prevent him from reaching the goal of quitting. smoking – declares Roberto Boffi, head of Pneumology and Anti-Smoking Center Fondazione Irccs National Cancer Institute of Milan – it is essential instead to ‘know in order to decide’, as a slogan used a few years ago for a campaign in the schools of the National Cancer Institute states, but also to support and motivate the smoker in the path towards non-addiction, a path that is not always easy and that the smoker usually faces alone. An even more important commitment in this era of pandemic, where social isolation and other stress factors linked to the emergency situation contribute to further distance the goal of quitting smoking “.

In times of Covid-19, quitting smoking takes on an even more significant value in terms of health. According to data recently published in the ‘Annals of the American Thoracic Society’, smoking is in fact an important risk factor associated with more serious consequences of Sars-Cov2 infection: the risk of death in a hospital setting for a smoker. it would be about double that of a non-smoker.