[Approach on smoking cessation by training public health providers].

The study evaluated the results of a smoking cessation training program including 40 public health providers from November 2004 to March 2007. A total of 3,419 smokers received minimum individual intervention and 982 had group intervention. Of all, 9.2% quit smoking. The main difficulties for smoking cessation reported by health providers were: low patient compliance (11%); lack of medications (38%); and lack of health unit infrastructure/support (29%). The training allowed to reaching out a larger population through smoking cessation approaches at health units.