• Next Monday, May 14th, the Catalan Network of Smoke-free Hospitals will hold its annual meeting at the Institut Català d’Oncologia.

• This Network promotes active policies against tobacco consumption in hospitals, and it gathers 46 of the 61 public hospitals.

• The programme to give up smoking is already in use in 31 hospitals of the Network.
The Institut Català d’Oncologia (ICO) runs the Catalan Network of Smoke-free Hospitals (XCHsF ) which, with the support of the General Management of Public Health (depending on the Department of Health), collaborates in the implantation of programmes for hospital staff to give up the tobacco consumption habit.
Next Monday, May 14th, the Network will hold its annual meeting at the Institut Català d’Oncologia at the centre of ICO in Hospitalet, as a previous ceremony to the World Day without Tobacco, which will be on May 30th. The meeting will be useful to weigh up the activities that have been carried out during the last year, and to debate the course of action that we will potenciate in the future.

Commenting on last year…
Thanks to this programme to give up smoking, the XCHsF offers help to hospital workers to stop this habit. The people who take part in it take advantage of personalized assistance, confidenciality, six months’ monitoring and free pharmacy treatment if it is necessary.

• The programme to give up smoking is already in use in 31 hospitals of the Network.
• In the last year and a half more than 850 health professionals have started a treatment to stop smoking.
• Moreover, 15 hospitals also have specific projects for their patients.

... and objectives for the next one

1. To spread these programmes to more hospitals. We also want to give a better training to health professionals to stop smoking and to offer them some educational resources.

2. The Programme ‘Smoke-free Maternity’. This idea was suggested by the European Network of Smoke-free Hospitals. It is meant for the maternity wards so that they advise and support mothers-to-be in order to help those of them who smoke to give up the habit. In Catalonia this project is managed by ICO and has already been implanted in the maternity wards of the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona, the Althaia Foundation in Manresa, the Sant Jaume Hospital in Olot and the Santa Caterina Hospital in Girona.

The Catalan Network of Smoke-free Hospitals was created in 1999. It was promoted and is run by ICO, and adhering to it is voluntary. Its goal is to promote organization changes that favour smoke-free health institutions. In the last few years there has been a continuous increase in adhering centres. Nowadays, 46 out of the 61 hospitals which belong to the public health system (XHUP ) are part of it.