Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many cases of rickets there were among children and young people in each of the last 10 years.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has provided a link to their annual publication for admitted patient care which contains data on hospital admissions where there is a diagnosis of rickets:

http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB19124/hosp-epis-stat-admi-diag-2014-15-tab.xlsx

Data on earlier years can be found at:

http://www.hscic.gov.uk/searchcatalogue?q=title%3a%22Hospital+Episode+Statistics%2c+Admitted+patient+care+-+England%22&sort=Most+recent&size=10&page=1#top

The annual publication provides the total number of finished admission episodes and an age breakdown of finished consultant episodes.

This data only reflects cases that have resulted in a hospital admission. Cases of rickets may also be diagnosed in a primary care setting which do not result in a hospital admission. This data should not be described as a count of people as the same person may have been admitted on one or more occasion.