Health: Influenza

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Thornton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the reported increase in the incidence of influenza since the end of November; and how many adults and children suffering from influenza were admitted to hospital or died in December.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

My Lords, influenza-like illness, or ILI, has increased from 13 to 98 GP consultations per 100,000 people since November. The department does not currently collect data on hospital admissions. As of 6 January, there were 783 patients with ILI in critical care beds in England, and 50 flu- related fatal cases verified by the Health Protection Agency in the UK.

[Baroness Thornton]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. Last June, I asked him about the 50 per cent cut in the communications budget for the Department of Health. He said that,

“every programme of communication or marketing has to be justified by the evidence that it will do some good”.—[Official Report, 30/6/10; col. 1798.]

We know that pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to the H1N1 strain of influenza, and HPA’s data show that the risk of mortality for pregnant women is sevenfold greater than that for non-pregnant women. Even so, midwives received a letter from Andrew Lansley, dated 16 December, encouraging them to vaccinate pregnant women. Does the Minister think that it is possible that, had the Government acted earlier and had a public campaign, had they not cut their public health communications budget, and had Andrew Lansley sent a letter in October rather than December, the lifes of at least one pregnant woman might have been saved?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, it is quite difficult to substantiate that suggestion, because the immunisation figures do not bear out the noble Baroness’s argument. The level of vaccine uptake in the over-65s is 70 per cent, which is better than in most countries of Europe. Among the at-risk under-65s, it is 45.5 per cent, which is comparable to the past two years. Therefore, it is not clear that a generalised campaign would have added value.

On the question of pregnant women, the normal procedure is for the Chief Medical Officer to write to all GPs in the summer, setting out all the at-risk groups. She did that in June. We were then alerted in December by the Health Protection Agency to a worryingly high number of pregnant women who had contracted influenza, so we wrote to both the BMA and the Royal College of Midwives to emphasise the desirability of encouraging that group of patients to get vaccinated. We did the right thing, which was to respond to emerging data.