Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 21 November (HL3153), what plans they have to produce a national improvement framework for hepatitis C.

The United Kingdom has a comprehensive surveillance system in place combining laboratory diagnoses data, risk behaviour data, outcome data, statistical modelling and service evaluation. This enables the health and social care system to monitor the cascade of care (the pathway for testing and diagnosis to contact with health services through to treatment and outcomes), detect outbreaks, and generate burden estimates. Prevention efforts in minimising harm to people who inject drugs are focused on increasing access to opiate substitution therapies and needle syringe exchange programmes, and the use of disinfection tablets in prisons. NHS England leads on treatment and continues to support National Health Service-led Operational Delivery Networks to provide National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved treatments for hepatitis C.

Public Health England supports the Government’s efforts by publishing hepatitis C metrics which are available in the report Hepatitis C in the UK 2016 report: Working towards its elimination as a major public health threat. A copy of the report is attached.