Asked by: Paul Flynn (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what weekend visits he has made to front-line health service providers in the current Parliament.
Answered by Jane Ellison
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has undertaken the following weekend visit to a front-line health service provider.
26 December 2015 Milford Hospital, Surrey
As Secretary of State with overall responsibility for the National Health Service, he routinely attends to Departmental business at weekends.
Asked by: Paul Flynn (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many instances of adverse reactions have been reported under the Yellow Card Scheme; and what the nature of the reaction reported was in the case of (a) dabigatran, (b) rivaroxaban and (c) apixaban.
Answered by George Freeman
Reports of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are collected by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Commission for Human Medicines through the spontaneous reporting scheme, the Yellow Card Scheme. The scheme collects suspected ADR reports from the whole of the United Kingdom in relation to all medicines and vaccines. Reporting to the Yellow Card Scheme is voluntary for healthcare professionals and members of the public. There is also a legal obligation for pharmaceutical companies to report all serious ADRs for their products that they are aware of.
The table below provides the number of UK suspected spontaneous ADR reports received via the Yellow card Scheme in association with each drug substance as requested.
The information in the table shows the number of UK spontaneous suspected ADR reports in association with Dabigatran, Rivaroxaban and Apixaban up to and including 7 March 2016.
Drug substance | Number of reports |
Dabigatran | 1,552 |
Rivaroxaban | 3,291 |
Apixaban | 900 |
A full list of the type and number of reactions, broken down by the reaction term, is publically available for each medicine on the MHRA website. It is important to note that Yellow Card reports are not proof of a side effect occurring due to the medicine but only a suspicion by the reporter that the medicine may have caused the side effect. Yellow Card reports may therefore relate to true side effects of the medicine, or they may be due to coincidental illnesses that would have occurred in the absence of the medicine.
Dabigatran, rivaroxaban and apixaban are anticoagulant medicines used to prevent or treat blood clots. The most commonly reported adverse reaction for all three medicines is gastrointestinal haemorrhage or bleeding, which is in keeping with the known anticoagulant effects of these medicines. Other relatively commonly reported suspected adverse reactions include bleeding at other sites of the body, gastrointestinal symptoms (such as nausea, pain and diarrhoea), anaemia, and rash. These adverse reactions are described in the product information, in both the Patient Information Leaflet for patients and the Summary of Healthcare Products for healthcare professionals.
Asked by: Paul Flynn (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps his Department has taken to increase the number of bone marrow donors in the UK.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The Department has provided £19 million in additional funding to improve the provision of stem cells through the work of our delivery partners, NHS Blood and Transplant and Anthony Nolan since 2011. This funding has supported a range of developments including the targeted recruitment of young male donors. To date over 75,000 young male donors have been recruited and evidence shows that these donors are approximately six times more likely to be requested to donate.
Asked by: Paul Flynn (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what resources his Department has allocated to tackle loneliness amongst older people in the last 12 months.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The Department recognises that loneliness can have a negative impact on a person’s general health. It will continue to take account of the latest research in developing its policies to support local authorities and communities to address loneliness. A recent study by researchers at the University of California and the University of Chicago, published in the journal PNAS in November 2015, adds to the evidence base in this field.
Loneliness is a complex problem and affects people in many different ways. Given the complexity of loneliness and the different ways that people are affected, there is no single solution. Many of the solutions to combatting loneliness lie within local communities and involve local authorities, community organisations, the voluntary sector and individuals, working together. Local authorities prioritise how they spend their funding for social care. In 2014-15 authorities spent around £80 million in tackling social isolation in England[1].
Government has a part to play. It has prioritised prevention through the Care Act 2014.The Department has funded the Social Care Institute for Excellence to develop and run the Prevention Library which includes examples of emerging practice to prevent, reduce or delay people’s care and support needs from deteriorating. This includes examples of innovative projects to tackle loneliness. The Department has also supported a ‘digital toolkit’ for local commissioners, which was developed by the Campaign to End Loneliness and is incorporated in its guidance for commissioners. The guidance can be found at:
http://campaigntoendloneliness.org/toolkit/
[1] Personal Social Services: Expenditure and Unit Costs England 2014-15, Final release. Published November 2015. http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB19165/pss-exp-eng-14-15-fin-rep.pdf. The Health and Social Care Information Centre.
Asked by: Paul Flynn (Labour - Newport West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policies of the paper, entitled Myeloid differentiation architecture of leukocyte transcriptome dynamics in perceived social isolation, which links loneliness to a decline in health, published by the US National Academy of Sciences on 23 November 2015; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The Department recognises that loneliness can have a negative impact on a person’s general health. It will continue to take account of the latest research in developing its policies to support local authorities and communities to address loneliness. A recent study by researchers at the University of California and the University of Chicago, published in the journal PNAS in November 2015, adds to the evidence base in this field.
Loneliness is a complex problem and affects people in many different ways. Given the complexity of loneliness and the different ways that people are affected, there is no single solution. Many of the solutions to combatting loneliness lie within local communities and involve local authorities, community organisations, the voluntary sector and individuals, working together. Local authorities prioritise how they spend their funding for social care. In 2014-15 authorities spent around £80 million in tackling social isolation in England[1].
Government has a part to play. It has prioritised prevention through the Care Act 2014.The Department has funded the Social Care Institute for Excellence to develop and run the Prevention Library which includes examples of emerging practice to prevent, reduce or delay people’s care and support needs from deteriorating. This includes examples of innovative projects to tackle loneliness. The Department has also supported a ‘digital toolkit’ for local commissioners, which was developed by the Campaign to End Loneliness and is incorporated in its guidance for commissioners. The guidance can be found at:
http://campaigntoendloneliness.org/toolkit/
[1] Personal Social Services: Expenditure and Unit Costs England 2014-15, Final release. Published November 2015. http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB19165/pss-exp-eng-14-15-fin-rep.pdf. The Health and Social Care Information Centre.