Treatments help to quell the habit

It is about 2:30 in the afternoon, and Wang Xiaohong, the smoking-cessation therapist with Peking University Third Hospital, is talking with a husband and wife about ways for him to quit his habit.

She has been working in the hospital as a respiratory disease specialist since 1991, and started her practice as a stop-smoking adviser in 2007, when the hospital established one of the earliest smoking-cessation clinics in Beijing.

The man, a 59-year-old diabetic inpatient, came to Wang for help while he was hospitalized, because his wife asked him to, not because he wanted to.