Polio

Baroness Masham of Ilton Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a really important about the future of the NHS and our health services. Last week, the Government published the Data Saves Lives strategy, which is what it says on the cover. One of the first issues we must tackle is digitising the NHS as much as possible. Digitisation is one of my three priorities, alongside sharing data. First, this will ensure that we can identify population health issues and patterns in conjunction with AI; secondly, giving appropriate access to researchers allows us to continue to be world-beating in identifying such issues. In future, it may well be that we can get a sample, use a bit of AI—thanks to other data sets—and locate more accurately. At the moment, we are really at the cutting edge of this. What will be vital to it is the digitisation, sharing of and access to data across the system.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, is it known how many countries are using the live vaccine, which is different from the vaccine we are using?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

I am aware that there are still some countries that use the oral polio vaccine, as opposed to the IPV we use in this country. I do not have the exact numbers with me. If the noble Baroness with allow me, I will go back to the department, see if that information is available and then write to her.