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  • Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fabian Hamilton on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to improve equality of access to echo-cardiography for the identification of heart valve disease for people aged over 65.

    Jane Ellison

    NHS England is holding a Clinical Summit on 15 June 2016, bringing together cardiologists and cardiac surgeons to examine the issues relating to heart valve disease. This will discuss variation and the outputs will be used to inform the future commissioning approach within specialised commissioning.

    In addition, the office of the Chief Scientific Officer for NHS England is working with the National Clinical Director for Heart Disease and Health Education England to look at ways to improve provision and increase access to echocardiography for the identification of heart valve disease.

    NHS England has also undertaken a significant programme of work on congenital heart services, working very closely with the relevant stakeholders, including patients and their representatives, clinicians and hospital managers. This work produced a new set of service standards with the aim of achieving the best outcomes for all patients, consistently across the whole country and with excellent patient experience. Following consultation these standards were agreed by the board of NHS England in July 2015 and came into effect on 1 April 2016.

  • Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Fabian Hamilton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fabian Hamilton on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to ensure equality of access to heart valve replacements.

    Jane Ellison

    NHS England is holding a Clinical Summit on 15 June 2016, bringing together cardiologists and cardiac surgeons to examine the issues relating to heart valve disease. This will discuss variation and the outputs will be used to inform the future commissioning approach within specialised commissioning.

    In addition, the office of the Chief Scientific Officer for NHS England is working with the National Clinical Director for Heart Disease and Health Education England to look at ways to improve provision and increase access to echocardiography for the identification of heart valve disease.

    NHS England has also undertaken a significant programme of work on congenital heart services, working very closely with the relevant stakeholders, including patients and their representatives, clinicians and hospital managers. This work produced a new set of service standards with the aim of achieving the best outcomes for all patients, consistently across the whole country and with excellent patient experience. Following consultation these standards were agreed by the board of NHS England in July 2015 and came into effect on 1 April 2016.

  • Rebecca Long Bailey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Rebecca Long Bailey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rebecca Long Bailey on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that outsourced hospital food providers and the places they source their ingredients are monitored regularly to ensure the highest hygiene standards.

    Jane Ellison

    All hospital food providers need to register with their local authority Environmental Health Department, who will carry out food safety interventions, including inspections, at a frequency determined by the risk based intervention criteria in the Food Law Code of Practice. The inspections will include consideration of the provider’s traceability system.

  • Rebecca Long Bailey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Rebecca Long Bailey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rebecca Long Bailey on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what research his Department has conducted on the effect on levels of food waste in hospitals of changing provision of food from in-house kitchen preparation to a cook-chill or cook-freeze system.

    George Freeman

    The Department has not conducted research on the subject requested. Data on unserved patient meals was collected through the Estates Returns Information Collection until 2013-14, but it excluded data on waste generated during food production and waste from uneaten patient meals. The question was removed from the 2014-15 collection onwards as the data did not present an accurate picture for all food waste.

  • Anna Turley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Anna Turley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Anna Turley on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting time on the organ waiting list for a kidney transplant was for people in Teesside in each year from 2010; and what that average such waiting time was for people from BAME backgrounds in that area in each of those years.

    Jane Ellison

    Information on waiting times is provided by NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT). This is provided by transplant centre rather than area.

    Patients in Teesside who require a kidney transplant are likely to be referred to the Newcastle Transplant Centre, where the average waiting time for a kidney transplant is 583 days. This is lower than the national average of 979 days. These averages are based on patients registered from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2012.

    NHSBT does not hold waiting time figures broken down by ethnicity for each transplant unit.

    Note:

    The average is drawn from a median formula.

  • Richard Arkless – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Richard Arkless – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Arkless on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent discussions the Government has had with (a) the World Health Organisation and (b) other stakeholders on the response to the spread of the Zika virus in South America.

    Mr Nick Hurd

    The Department for International Development is working with the Department for Heath, who are leading the UK government’s response to Zika, and Public Health England and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. This includes supporting the World Health Organisation in galvanising an effective international response.

    We are not only concerned exclusively by the spread of Zika in the Americas but are equally concerned by the possible spread to other parts of the world – in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia where countries have less capacity to cope with such a disease.

    The UK is supporting and commissioning research to better understand the Zika virus, its epidemiology and impacts, with particular focus on the risk to developing countries, and research into interventions to address this virus. This includes:

    • DFID and Wellcome providing funding to commission Zika research on specific topics including understanding the spread of the disease and variation between Zika strains, the effectiveness of new and existing approaches to vector control.
    • A general call for research proposals jointly issued by the Medical Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the Newton Fund for rapid turnaround projects. These studies will include disease surveillance, epidemiology, Zika transmission, research into Zika virus and clinical outcomes.
    • The Department of Health’s UK Vaccine Network funding the University of Glasgow to develop a Zika vaccine.

    DFID is in the process of allocating more resources to the WHO for disease control preparedness, including Zika and Yellow Fever, including £4 m for Africa, £1.3 m for the Caribbean and £4 m for the rest of the world. DH and DFID officials along with representatives from key agencies – European Commission Humanitarian Aid & Civil Protection (ECHO), Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), Inst Pasteur, EU Research Brussels, Paul Allen Foundation, as well as Canada, Japan, France and Australia – participated in a WHO/Donor Teleconference on 20 April to further coordinate response to Zika.

  • Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to define a target for the number of out-of-area placements for non-specialist mental health care.

    Alistair Burt

    In April 2016, the Government announced a national ambition to eliminate inappropriate out of area treatments for adult acute inpatient care as a result of local acute bed pressures by 2020/21 at the latest. We expect areas to put in place local action plans and achieve year on year reductions from 2016/17.

  • Stephen Doughty – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Stephen Doughty – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Doughty on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether (a) he and (b) ministers of his Department have had discussions with the new Welsh Government on support arrangements for people infected with contaminated blood.

    Jane Ellison

    There have been no discussions at ministerial level with the new Welsh Government on this issue. Departmental officials continue to discuss the operation of the current schemes and the on-going analysis of the responses to the recent consultation on the reform of the infected blood payment scheme with their opposite numbers.

  • Andrew Rosindell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Andrew Rosindell – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to advance the development of a cure for HIV; what assessment he has made of the development by the US government of HIV antibodies which bind to the target site and stop the virus from infecting the cell; and what international research partnerships his Department currently has for developing a cure for HIV.

    Jane Ellison

    The United Kingdom Government provides funding to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). IAVI has been instrumental in working with partners, including the United States National Institutes of Health who have undertaken the work to identify broadly neutralising antibodies from asymptomatic people infected with HIV. IAVI and its partners are still at an early stage of working with these broadly neutralising antibodies, to investigate how they might be used to prevent and treat HIV infection.

    Funding from the UK Government has allowed IAVI to bring together expertise from academia and the pharmaceutical sector, and from across regions, including the UK and Eastern and Southern Africa, to collaboratively design and evaluate novel vaccine candidates, to demonstrate, in the longer-term, that at least one can be fully developed into an effective vaccine to help prevent HIV infection or AIDS.

  • Nusrat Ghani – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Nusrat Ghani – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nusrat Ghani on 2016-05-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 9 May 2016 to Question 36175, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the length of time from the onset of symptoms to the diagnosis of endometriosis.

    Jane Ellison

    The Department has asked the National Institute of Health for Health and Care Excellence to develop a guideline on the diagnosis and management of endometriosis. This will include: symptoms and signs of endometriosis; and use of diagnostic tests including imaging, biomarkers and surgical diagnosis. The guideline is due to be published in September 2017.