Antimicrobial Resistance Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department of Health and Social Care
Baroness Jolly
Main Page: Baroness Jolly (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Jolly's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, in 2016 just under 250,000 people developed multidrug-resistant TB globally, and in 2015 a report found that one-third of London boroughs exceeded the World Health Organization’s high-incidence threshold for TB. This poses a huge threat to public health. What action is being taken to get on top of this by the Department of Health, Public Health England and other agencies?
Lord O’Shaughnessy
The noble Baroness is quite right about the risk in London. We actually have a good TB story in this country—a 41% reduction between 2011 and 2016—but London has the highest rates in the UK. I can tell her that Public Health England and the GLA are working closely together to reduce TB. In fact there are innovative new approaches, such as UCLH’s Find & Treat mobile unit, which I myself visited last year, which is going out and finding people at the highest risk, screening them and then taking them for treatment.