Health: Tick-borne Encephalitis

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Lord Winston

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right, and I am happy to recognise the organisation that she mentioned. In the first place, the tick toolkit and the work of PHE is in place to raise awareness, and work goes into providing advice to professionals so that early diagnosis is possible.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, one of the problems with Lyme disease is that the symptoms that it causes mimic a whole range of different viral infections, many of which are much more common. Does the Minister feel that the Government are doing enough to raise awareness of Lyme disease among general practitioners, and is she satisfied that the screening tests—I think that they cost around £60 a time—are sufficient?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord is quite right, and he understands this a lot better than I do. NICE published guidelines for health professionals in 2018 in an effort to ensure prompt diagnosis of Lyme disease. Obviously if it is recognised promptly and treated with antibiotics, acute Lyme disease is usually resolved without further complications. I will take away the question about the cost of the test to consider whether that has been a barrier; we have no evidence about that at this time.

Sexually Transmitted Infections: England

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Lord Winston

Thursday 5th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

My noble friend is absolutely right that increases in particular STIs are worrying and we need to make sure that we drive forward our response to that. Some BAME groups are at particularly high risk of STI acquisition, particularly those from a black Caribbean background possibly due to a higher number of sexual partners. PHE’s reproductive, sexual health and HIV innovation fund is spearheading new, innovative, community-led interventions to support those at increased risk of infection and we will continue to look for new ways to respond to these challenges.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, it is very unwise to group all STIs together and the organism that I should like to concentrate on for the moment is chlamydia. We may not be diagnosing chlamydia in the right way. Given that the NICE guidelines now mean that we hardly ever do laparoscopies, we cannot show whether people have tubal damage, which is said to be an important part of chlamydia. In my view, that is greatly overestimated. What does the Minister think about research into whether chlamydia really does cause infertility and other problems with conception?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Lord is of course an expert in where we should target our research. The NIHR is a £1 billion fund which is not targeted specifically. However, it is right that we should target research into STIs to ensure our response to the challenges. We know that STIs are increasing so we should include research into them.

GP Partnership Review

Debate between Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford and Lord Winston

Thursday 21st February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right: we want to free up GPs to do exactly what they have been trained to do, which is to care for patients. That is why, as part of the GP contract, we have included funding to ensure that they can claim for any additional costs that they may have under the GDPR. It is also why we put in the long-term plan that we want to recruit an extra 20,000 staff who can provide the other services, such as administrative services, that GPs are sometimes caught up doing when they should not be.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, the list of things that the Government intend sounds very impressive. I have a simple question. Communication is particularly important to general practitioners, who may see 90 or 100 patients with abdominal pain, one of whom may have a cancer of the colon. That is one of the major problems. Has the noble Baroness ever sat down and had informal conversations with general practitioners who are threatening to retire, or are retiring, early to understand how they feel about it?

[Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford]

I absolutely have had a large number of conversations with general practitioners who have struggled. In my previous role as a Member of Parliament, I visited a large number of general practices in my constituency. I am also the daughter of a doctor and I have a rare disease, so I spend a lot of time in the NHS as a patient and, perhaps, as a mystery shopper—so I assure the noble Lord that I have extensive experience of the NHS. I would not claim, however, to understand what it is like to be a general practitioner, so I would always hope to learn by continued experience of listening to their experiences and challenges.