Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of eligible people were immunised against TB in (a) England, (b) London, (c) primary care trusts in London and (d) London boroughs in each of the last five years.

The Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunisation programme is not a universal programme but a risk-based programme. In line with the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommendations, and National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance, BCG vaccination is offered to certain population sub-groups in England through either a universal or targeted infant vaccination programme dependent on residence in a high-incidence area (one in which tuberculosis (TB) incidence exceeds 40 cases per 100,000 population) or an assessment of individual risk factors.

There are no published data on proportion of eligible people immunised against TB because of the problem of defining the denominator (i.e. the total number of vaccine eligible persons in the population).