Traditional quitting
Credit: Timothy Donahue
A hospital in Hong Kong is using acupuncture and counseling to help people quit smoking, according to a story by Li Bingcun for the China Daily.
The basic course comprises six acupuncture treatments and four face-to-face counseling sessions during the first month.
If the patient quits smoking during those first four weeks, a practitioner monitors his or her progress at 26 weeks and 52 weeks.
If the first month’s treatment doesn’t work, patients are encouraged to continue visiting over the following year via a follow-up service, which places no limit on the number of visits that may be made.
Li said that many smokers had turned to ‘ancient remedies’ in a last-ditch effort to quit their habit.
More than 10,000 smokers in Hong Kong had used the smoking cessation program offered by the hospital since 2010.
The program is reportedly Hong Kong’s first smoking-cessation program to be based on traditional Chinese medicine.