Asked by: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of flu vaccine doses available to the NHS in winter 2020/21 are the types generally used for adults (a) at or over and (b) under the age of 65.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Information on which vaccines are recommended for the different cohorts is included in the Annual Flu Letter Update 2020/21 which is available at the following link:
General practitioners and community pharmacies are responsible for ordering flu vaccines from suppliers, which are used to deliver the national flu programme to adults. The Department does not routinely collect information on the different vaccines that have been ordered by local providers.
Asked by: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have died by suicide in each month from 1 April 2020 to 1 September 2020; and how many of those people had been reported missing prior to their death.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The data is not held in the format requested.
Asked by: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department applies to determine what goods qualify as essential health products.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The Department does not identify essential health products for policy purposes. It does, however, recognise a number of Category 1 goods – goods which are “critical to preservation of human or animal welfare and/or national security for the United Kingdom”.
The Department’s Category 1 products are human medicines, covering prescription-only, pharmacy and general sales list medicines, clinical trials and children’s vitamins; medical devices and clinical consumables; vaccines; nutritional specialist feeds, including infant milk formula and biological materials such as blood, organs, tissues and cells.
Asked by: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
What steps he is taking to secure the long-term future of the NHS.
Answered by Matt Hancock
We are increasing the National Health Service budget by £33.9 billion in cash terms over the next five years. This major investment will support the NHS to continue to deliver world class care. The NHS Long Term Plan has set out a vision for the NHS, ensuring that every penny is well spent.
Asked by: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) recruit and (b) retain GPs in (i) Medway, (ii) Kent and (iii) England.
Answered by Steve Brine
NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) are working together with the profession to increase the general practitioner (GP) workforce in England. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession, and encourage GPs to return to practice.
The number of doctors entering speciality training has been increasing year on year. Last year, HEE recruited the highest number of GP trainees ever - 3,473 GP trainees against a target of 3,250, a 10% increase on 2017.
Alongside training new GPs, there is a broad offer to support GPs to remain in the National Health Service including the GP Retention Scheme, the GP Retention Fund, the GP Health Service and the Releasing Time for Care Programme. It is also now quicker and easier for GPs to return to the NHS through the National Induction and Refresher Scheme.
Kent and Medway Sustainability and Transformation Partnership (STP) has advised that the STP is organised into three training hubs which provide education and workforce strategy groups for each of the regions they cover. The training hubs have prioritised strategies in GP retention, recruitment and developing new models of care which maximise individual, cluster and locality resilience. Some of the initiative being used within the regions include encouraging GPs to develop specialism (GP with Special Interest), mentoring support for newly qualified GPs and facilitating GPs in developing a portfolio career.
Medway Clinical Commissioning Group has advised it is working with Local Care Teams to develop new ways of working, including new roles to support GPs and enhance the way they utilise technology to support practices to make the best use of GPs’ time. These new ways of working have included training administrative staff in work flow optimisation freeing up GP time.
Asked by: Rehman Chishti (Conservative - Gillingham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
What steps he is taking to secure the long-term future of the NHS.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The National Health Service published its Long Term Plan last week, backed by £20.5 billion a year of taxpayers money, ensuring patients will be supported with world-class care at every stage of their life.