Asked by: Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the cost to the public purse has been of requiring medical professionals to disclose payments and gifts from medical and other suppliers; and what benefits have been derived from the implementing that requirement.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
There has been no measurement of the cost to the public purse of requiring medical professionals to disclose payments and gifts from medical and other suppliers.
Asked by: Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
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 ensure the adequacy of (a) treatment and (b) support for people with with tuberculosis.
Answered by Steve Brine
‘The Collaborative Tuberculosis (TB) Strategy for England 2015 to 2020’ was developed by Public Health England (PHE) in partnership with NHS England and aims to reduce suffering and harm caused by TB through lowering the incidence of the disease in England. The Strategy is available at the following link:
The strategy aims to tackle TB in under-served populations through the commissioning of integrated, multidisciplinary, case management and support for under-served groups. This multidisciplinary support, which may include third sector organisations, should provide targeted outreach interventions, informed by proven models such as ‘Find and Treat’ in London, including specific services for active case finding among homeless people and those attending substance misuse services.
In January 2016, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published a clinical guideline that covers preventing, identifying and managing latent and active TB in children, young people and adults. This is available at the following link:
https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng33
In 2017, PHE and the National Health Service issued a ‘TB Service Specification and Clinical Policy’ for use by commissioners and TB services. This builds on the work of the strategy to:
- improve rapid diagnosis and treatment of active TB disease;
- prevention of TB by treating latent infections; and
- focus on complex cases with antimicrobial resistance and patients with other risk factors for poor treatment outcome, such as homelessness.
NHS England is supporting those clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) with the highest burden of disease to provide latent TB testing and treatment programmes which are essential for reducing the incidence of active TB. In 2018/19, the 46 CCGs with the highest burden of disease were supported with £3,594,000 to provide this service.
According to the latest annual report ‘Tuberculosis in England: 2018’ published by PHE, since the peak of TB incidence in England in 2011 the number of people notified with TB had fallen by nearly 40% in 2017. The incidence rate in 2017 was 9.2 per 100,000 population, the lowest recorded rate for England, which for the first time falls under the 10 per 100,000 World Health Organization definition of a low incidence country. The report is available at the following link:
Asked by: Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions he has had with devolved authorities about Department of Health guidance on the use of adrenaline auto-injectors in schools.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department set up a guidance development group in July 2017 to develop guidance for schools in England on adrenaline auto-injectors (AAIs) in anticipation of the introduction of the Human Medicines (Amendment) Regulations 2017. The guidance is non-statutory and aims to capture the good practice which schools in England should observe in using spare AAIs. Schools may wish to use this as the basis of any protocol or policy.
The guidance development group included representatives of the devolved administrations. The guidance was intended for use in England, but can be used by the devolved administrations if they wish, or to help inform their own guidance. The Scottish Government will be publishing its own guidance for schools shortly.
Asked by: Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the dates were of the most recent meetings between Ministers of his Department and their counterparts in the devolved administrations; and what the dates are of the next planned meetings.
Answered by Steve Brine
Ministers have phone calls with their counterparts from the devolved administrations to discuss pertinent issues as they arise. There are no current meeting dates planned, although we would expect them to occur in due course.