Sarah BrealeyHaving stop-smoking advisers on hand to speak to shoppers helped more than 2,000 people in Norfolk to stop smoking during six months of last year.Sarah Brealey

Having stop-smoking advisers on hand to speak to shoppers helped more than 2,000 people in Norfolk to stop smoking during six months of last year.

The figures from the NHS Information Centre are for people who stopped with the help of the Norfolk Stop Smoking Service and cover the NHS Norfolk area, which does not include Yarmouth. During April to September, 1,030 men in NHS Norfolk's area successfully quit smoking, as did 972 women - bringing the total number of people to quit smoking to 2,002.

The figures place NHS Norfolk top of the 14 primary care trusts in the East of England. The figure compares with 4,263 people who stopped in the year between April 2009 and March 2009.

Jennie Pusey, NHS Norfolk's Stop Smoking Services Commissioning Manager, said: 'We've had a really good response from members of the public recently when we had information teams speaking to shoppers in Norwich, King's Lynn and Thetford about the support on hand from the service. When we did this in December, almost 400 people gave their contact details to the service so they could find out more about the help on offer. We are doing this again this week at the three locations, so we hope even more people will take the opportunity to find out more about how the Norfolk Stop Smoking Service can help them or a loved one.

'We always want to see more people contacting the service so we can help even more people to kick the habit. January through until March is a key time for people to want to give up smoking, which we put down to New Year's Resolutions and National No Smoking Day. So we hope that over the coming weeks, more people than ever will decide to contact the Norfolk Stop Smoking Service.'

t If you would like help to give up smoking, please contact Norfolk's Stop Smoking Service on 0800 0854 113.