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8 Nov 2004 : Column 535W—continued
Hospital Infections
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients in each (a) hospital and (b) trust in England have contracted methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus in the NHS since 1997, broken down into age groups (a) 0–10, (b) 11–20, (c) 21–30, (d) 31–40, (e) 41–50, (f) 51–60, (g) 61–70, (h) 71–80, (i) 81–90 and (j) older than 90 years. [193457]
Miss Melanie Johnson: Information for individual national health service trusts and hospitals broken down by age is not available.
Pete Wishart: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) UK and (b) Scottish recipients are anticipated to qualify for the Skipton Fund support for those who have contracted Hepatitis C from infected NHS blood products; and if he will make a statement. [193650]
Miss Melanie Johnson:
It is not possible to provide accurate figures on the number of people who will benefit from the Hepatitis C ex-gratia payment scheme.
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Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the work of Directors of Infection Control. [195487]
Miss Melanie Johnson: The director of infection prevention and control should oversee local control of infection policies and their implementation; and report directly to the chief executive and trust board. We expect these authoritative figures to play a key role in producing a national health service culture where infection control is everyone's business, rather than the job of specialists. They should have the authority to challenge inappropriate clinical hygiene practice as well as antibiotic prescribing decisions. Directors should have the appropriate expertise and authority to act to reduce local infection rates and one of their tasks is to produce a public annual report on progress.
Hysterectomy
Mr. Edwards: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many adverse incidents have been recorded from (a) uterine fibroid embolisation, (b) endometrial ablation and (c) hysterectomy, in each year since 1999. [195030]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has been established to improve the safety of national health service patient care by promoting an open culture and by introducing a new national reporting and learning system for patient safety incidents. The reporting system is being implemented across the NHS during 2004 and will provide information about reported patient safety incidents, including potentially any involving uterine fibroid embolisation, endometrial ablation or hysterectomy.
Junior Doctors
Dr. Murrison: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what measures he will take to improve the retention of junior doctors wishing to train part-time. [194986]
Mr. Hutton: In the last few years, there has been an increase in the number of junior doctors training on a part time basis under the existing flexible training scheme. This success means that more doctors are seeking part time posts in the national health service, and the Department is currently working with the British Medical Association and deaneries to develop new proposals for flexible trainees, which will better integrate into the NHS work force.
Dr. Murrison: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to increase post-graduate deanery budgets to accommodate (a) part-time training and (b) increasing numbers of junior doctors. [194987]
Mr. Hutton:
When the new contract for junior doctors was introduced in 2000, additional funding (£7 million) was provided to the service to fully resource the new arrangements for both full-time and part-time trainees. This funding is recurrent. It is for the deaneries, working on behalf of strategic health authorities (SHAs), to decide how these funds are allocated between part-time and full-time trainees—local needs must be fully considered. There are no plans to increase this amount.
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This year (2004–05) additional funding has been provided to SHAs in their multi professional education and training (MPET) allocations for 134 new general practitioner registrars, 119 new specialist registrars and 203 new pre-registration house officers. The MPET budget for 2005–06 has yet to be determined, but further funding will be provided for additional GP registrars, specialist registrars and pre-registration house officers, on top of funding provided for existing trainees.
Leukaemia
Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children were diagnosed with leukaemia in each of the last five years. [196004]
Mr. Timms: I have been asked to reply.
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the National Statistician, who has been asked to reply.
Letter from Len Cook to Mr. Keith Vaz, dated 8 November 2004:
As National Statistician, I have been asked to reply to your recent question concerning the number of children in the UK who were diagnosed with leukaemia in each of the last five years. (196004)
The most recent available figures are for the year 2001. The number of newly diagnosed cases of leukaemia registered in the years 1997 to 2001 are given in the table below.
| Number of cases | |
|---|---|
| 1997 | 459 |
| 1998 | 493 |
| 1999 | 479 |
| 2000 | 423 |
| 2001 | 421 |
(24) International Classification of Diseases Tenth Revision (ICD-10), codes C91-C95.
(25) Those aged 0 to 14 years.
Sources:
Office for National Statistics,
Welsh Cancer Intelligence & Surveillance Unit,
Scottish Cancer Registry,
Northern Ireland Cancer Registry
National Programme for IT
Dr. Murrison: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps he has taken (a) to promote public awareness that patient data will be held centrally under the National Programme for IT in the NHS and (b) to ensure that patients are aware of their ability to opt out of centrally held databases in the NHS. [194892]
Mr. Hutton:
A major public awareness campaign is being planned by the national programme for information technology (NPfIT) to address the full range of issues posed by implementation of a national health service care records service (NHS CRS) and to ensure that NHS patients know their rights and how information about them can be used within the health service. This campaign will commence in 2005 and will run for a number of years. To maximise the impact of the campaign, relevant information will be made
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available to NHS staff and to the public record in each local health community in the months running up to the go-live date for the NHS CRS.
The campaign will comprise written materials in various languages, web resources, and training tools and a media pack for health communities to use according to their local circumstances. It will complement communications activity in the NHS that is already required under Data Protection legislation and Departmental policy.
A key component of the NPfIT relates to the access controls that will protect data. Patients will be able to restrict who may see different elements of the data that is held about them and may choose to opt-out of having any data shared through the new systems. The Data Protection Act 1998 also provides patients with the right to object to the processing of data that can identify them where this may cause them substantial damage or distress. The NPfIT is considering how this right should apply to implementation of the NHS CRS.
NHS Doctors (Appraisal and Revalidation)
Mrs. Iris Robinson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the costs arising from the new appraisal and revalidation processes for NHS doctors. [190580]
Mr. Hutton: The General Medical Council (GMC) is currently in the process of consulting on proposed guidance for United Kingdom doctors undergoing revalidation, which it intend to introduce from July 2005. The implications for the national health service will depend very much on the outcome of the consultation and subsequent agreement with the GMC as to what systems we adopt for supporting NHS doctors to revalidate.
We will aim to introduce systems which do not entail significant extra bureaucracy for the NHS, while ensuring that doctors are supported in keeping up to date and fit to practise. That is why we have linked appraisal and revalidation, by using broadly the same data for both.
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