Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of pre-natal testing for HTLV-1; and if he will make a statement.
The United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) advises Ministers and the National Health Service in the four UK countries about all aspects of population screening and supports implementation of screening programmes.
The UK NSC last reviewed the evidence for the introduction of an antenatal screening programme for Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus (HTLV) infection in pregnancy in the UK in 2017 and concluded that the evidence did not support the introduction of screening. The UK NSC’s assessment is published and available at the following link:
https://legacyscreening.phe.org.uk/htlv