Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the accuracy of diagnosis of (a) vCJD and (b) vCJD among haemophiliacs.

The National CJD Research and Surveillance Unit, based in Edinburgh, funded by the Department and the Scottish Government, leads on case ascertainment of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in the general population including people with haemophilia. The Department is confident that the United Kingdom system for ascertaining vCJD cases is reliable and accurate. There is no evidence of significant under ascertainment, misdiagnosis or mis-counting of vCJD cases in the UK.