Abstract
The Czech Republic ranks in the long term among the countries with the highest tobacco smoking prevalence in Europe. Not only legislative changes, but also effective and available addiction treatment services can significantly help reduce the amount of tobacco smokers among the population.
One of these services is a tobacco quitline. The main advantage of telephone counselling is nationwide time and local availability for tobacco smokers and general public as well as professionals, and the potential to interconnect treatment services and thereby increase treatment retention and its consequent success rate.
The Czech Coalition against Tobacco has been operating the tobacco quitline since 2005. In 2016, the new concept of National Tobacco Quitline Czech Republic was launched, based on the international recommendations and practice of American and European tobacco quitlines.
This new professional service can help increase availability of tobacco quitline services and reduce tobacco smoking prevalence in the Czech Republic