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27 Feb 2009 : Column 1162W—continued
Tribunals: Disabled
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what steps he has taken to ensure that employment tribunal hearing centres have (a) hearing aid loops and (b) wheelchair access; and if he will make a statement. [258353]
Bridget Prentice: The Employment Tribunal, as part of the Tribunals Service, carries out Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) audits on all its sites. Those identified as needing improvements to the facilities have these carried out on a priority basis.
All permanent Employment Tribunal sites have hearing loops and where temporary venues are used, individual customers’ needs are assessed and catered for, including the use of mobile hearing loops. Where the DDA audit establishes that work is necessary to provide access for wheelchair users in compliance with DDA legislation, reasonable adjustments are made, as far as is possible.
Health
Abortion
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assistance his Department provides to women from Northern Ireland who come to England to have an abortion; and if he will make a statement. [258508]
Dawn Primarolo: The Department does not provide any form of assistance to women who travel from Northern Ireland to England seeking an abortion under the Abortion Act 1967, as amended.
Blood Transfusions: CJD
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what testing will be offered to patients with bleeding disorders exposed to the risk of infection of vCJD from transfusions; and if he will make a statement. [258720]
Dawn Primarolo: At present there are no suitable blood screening tests available, although there are tests under development which are currently being assessed. Advice on the suitability of candidate tests will be given by the UK Blood Service's Prion Assay Working Group and by the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood Tissues and Organs. If a suitable test is identified the offer of such a test to individuals will be for agreement between the individual and their clinician.
Lynne Featherstone: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many patients with bleeding disorders have been contacted to inform them of the level of risk of infection of vCJD they may have been exposed to from NHS transfusions; and if he will make a statement; [258721]
(2) what communication strategy his Department has undertaken in order to inform patients with bleeding disorders of the risk of infection of vCJD from NHS transfusions; what the cost of that strategy is; and if he will make a statement. [258722]
Dawn Primarolo:
In 2004, haemophiliacs were notified that they were considered as ‘at risk of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) for public health purposes’. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) wrote to all haemophiliac
care centres asking them to notify haemophilia patients and give them the opportunity to discuss the implications.
On the advice of the UK Haemophilia Centre Doctors' Organisation (UKHCDO) and the CJD Incidents Panel, it was agreed that all patients with bleeding disorders who had received plasma product clotting factors between 1980 and 2001 should be managed as ‘at risk' whether or not they were known to have received specific product batches manufactured from donors who subsequently developed clinical vCJD. Haemophilia centre doctors were asked to give patients the choice of finding out whether or not they had been treated with products known to have been manufactured using plasma from donors who developed vCJD. In 2006 when further implicated batches were identified, doctors were asked to notify those patients who had received these batches.
In February 2009, the HPA coordinated a patient notification exercise about a finding at post mortem of abnormal vCJD prion protein detected in the spleen of a patient with haemophilia. The HPA and the UKHCDO wrote to centres asking that a letter be sent to all patients informing them of this finding and emphasising that it did not change the status of patients already informed that they were ‘at risk'. The doctors were asked to give patients the opportunity to discuss the finding if they wished.
The patient notification exercises were supported by a wider communication strategy in which documentation was sent to others, including medical directors of NHS trusts, general practitioners and clinician and patient organisations, including the Haemophilia Society, and information placed on the HPA website.
There are thought to be approximately 4,000 patients who received plasma products between 1980 and 2001, and these patients were contacted by their clinicians. However, the precise numbers of patients contacted in each exercises is not collected centrally.
Expenditure on these notification exercises has not been separately costed.
Breast Cancer: Health Services
Mr. Gray: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many and what percentage of women in Wiltshire with suspected breast cancer saw a specialist within two weeks of referral in each of the last five years. [258282]
Ann Keen: The number and percentage of women in Wiltshire with suspected breast cancer seen by a specialist within two weeks of referral for each financial year for the three national health service trusts that cover Wiltshire are given in the following tables.
| Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust | ||
| Number of women | As percentage seen within 14 days | |
| Swindon and Marlborough NHS Trust (Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since December 2008) | ||
| Number of women | As percentage seen within 14 days | |
| Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust | ||
| Number of women | As percentage seen within 14 days | |
| Notes: The data in the table above are aggregate figures from the quarterly cancer waiting data. Source: Quarterly cancer waiting data can be found on the Cancer Waiting Times Database | ||
Charities: Finance
Frank Cook:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health which of the organisations which submitted an application for funding under the Third Sector Investment Programme for 2009-10 are awaiting a decision on that application; and which organisations
submitted applications which were not progressed to the second stage of the programme. [258859]
Phil Hope: Out of 988 applications received under the Third Sector Investment Programme, 715 were declined at Stage 1 of the application process and 247 are awaiting a decision at Stage 2. A list of the organisations in each category has been placed in the Library.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Martin Horwood: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people in each age cohort (a) were diagnosed with and (b) had their death attributed to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in each of the last 10 years; and what the equivalent figures are for 2009 to date. [259728]
Dawn Primarolo: The following tables show separately the deaths from sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), familial or genetic CJD/Gerstmann-Straussler-Scheinker syndrome, iatrogenic CJD and variant OD from 1999-2009 by 10-year age cohorts. A further table shows age at diagnosis for variant CJD in 10 year age cohorts or, for those cases who were diagnosed only after death (i.e. post mortem), age at death. For other forms of CJD, data on year of diagnosis are almost identical to year of death as mean survival are only four months.
| Deaths from sporadic CJD in the UK: 1999-2008 and 2009 to date | ||||||||||
| Age at death (yrs) | ||||||||||
| 10-19 | 20-29 | 30-39 | 40-49 | 50-59 | 60-69 | 70-79 | 80-89 | 90+ | Total | |
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