Streptococcus
(asked on 21st July 2015) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what guidance his Department has issued (a) to ensure that (i) health professionals involved in the care of pregnant women and (ii) pregnant women are informed about group B Streptococcus and (b) on effectiveness of tests used within the NHS to detect carriage of group B Streptococcus.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has produced a Green-top guideline: Prevention of Early-Onset Neonatal Group B Streptococcal Disease. The Green-top guideline provides guidance for obstetricians, midwives and neonatologists on the prevention of early-onset neonatal group B streptococcal (GBS) disease. The first edition was published in 2003 and the second updated edition was published in 2012. An audit in partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and supported by the Royal College of Midwives was recently carried out by the RCOG. It examined current practice in preventing early- onset neonatal GBS disease by investigating the implementation of the RCOG Green-top guideline (2012 edition) and identified key areas for improvement. The first report was published on 5 March 2015 and found that the majority of obstetric units in the United Kingdom have written protocols to prevent early onset GBS disease in newborn babies. However, there is still variation in practice across units. The second report is due to be published later this year. Further information is available at:
In addition the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has published a clinical guideline which addresses early-onset GBS and other neonatal infections, ‘Antibiotics for early-onset neonatal infection: Antibiotics for the prevention and treatment of early-onset neonatal infection’ (August 2012).The clinical guideline is available at:
http://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg149
Information on GBS in pregnancy is publically available on the NHS Choices website at:
http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/pages/pregnancy-infections.aspx. The RCOG has also developed public information on early onset GBS:
In June 2015, Public Health England (PHE) published the paper, ‘Enriched culture medium test for group B streptococcus infection: position paper’. The paper concluded that within current accepted clinical guidelines, there are no indications for testing women using enriched culture medium (ECM) methods. Therefore the ECM test has not been introduced into PHE laboratories. The position paper is available on the gov.uk website at:
UK standards for microbiology investigations B58: Detection of carriage of Group B Streptococci, which was updated in June 2015, is publically available on the gov.uk website at: