More than half of pregnant Bulgarian women could not manage to stop smoking, a Surecheck marketing research announced on January 9 as reported by mediapool.bg.

64 per cent of future Bulgarian mothers realised the harm inflicted on their child and yet only cut down on smoking instead of completely stopping.

The research was carried out among women-smokers between 22 and 53 years of age, mediapool.bg said. According to it the main factor that prevented pregnant women from stopping smoking was a lack of will.

Almost 100 per cent of the mothers, however, did quit smoking during breastfeeding since they firmly believed tobacco damaged their milk. Despite this, 90 per cent of them started smoking again immediately after they stopped breastfeeding their child.

Despite not having been able to top smoking during their pregnancy, 90 per cent of the women interviewed thought that Bulgaria should reduce smoking in public as was already done in Italy, the UK and France, mediapool.bg reported.