Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an estimate of the number of people who have sepsis but are not aware of it.

Data are not available in the format requested. Cases of sepsis can only be identified where a hospital admission has occurred; therefore collected figures exclude cases treated without the patient being admitted to hospital.

The table attached provides a count of finished admission episodes (FAEs) with a primary or secondary diagnosis of sepsis, for England, by clinical commissioning group of residence, 2012-13 to 2016-17. A FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.

Data are not collected on number of people who have sepsis but are not aware of it.

Sepsis is a devastating condition that we need to get better at spotting across the National Health Service. By raising awareness and improving clinical practice we will save lives in the fight against this horrible illness. Better awareness has led to more cases of sepsis being detected across all age groups. We estimate that our cross system efforts since 2015 have saved over a thousand lives but we know there is more to do and this is why a new action plan was launched in September 2017 to ensure the NHS is on the highest possible alert to tackle this silent killer.