A KIDDERMINSTER dental practice is one of the first in the country to host a clinic giving specialist help to smokers.

Whitehouse and Partners will be running the Phoenix Stop Smoking Programme to help people quit the habit.

National Stop Smoking Centres (NSSC) will be opening the clinics throughout the UK and has chosen the Kidderminster practice to launch the scheme.

Claire Pawson, practice manager, said: ” We are pleased to have been selected by NSSC to launch The Phoenix Programme here in Kidderminster. We have been telling our patients for years about the problems of smoking, so I am delighted to be able to offer practical help at last. I am sure this is going to be a great success.”

Robert Brynin, operations director at NSSC, added “GPs are able to offer drug products to smokers but until now there has never been a national scheme to make therapy available.

"We know that dentists are very concerned about the effect of smoking on oral health, and many dentists have told us they would like to do more to help their smoking patients, but this has been seen as the province of doctors until now.”