Asked by: Jacob Collier (Labour - Burton and Uttoxeter)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support people with long covid.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I know firsthand how complex and debilitating long COVID can be, and I am committed to improving support for people affected.
Since 2020, specialist long COVID services have been made available. This includes setting up over 100 long COVID services across England.
We have also invested over £57 million in long COVID research, and I recently co-chaired a roundtable on strategies to stimulate further research into treatments.
Asked by: Jacob Collier (Labour - Burton and Uttoxeter)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to improve NHS dental provision in Burton and Uttoxeter constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government plans to tackle the challenges patients face when trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments, and recruit new dentists to areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to NHS dental care, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.
From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population was delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. NHS dentists are required to keep their profiles on the NHS.UK website up to date so that patients can find a dentist more easily. This includes information on whether they are accepting new patients. In circumstances where patients are unable to access an urgent dental appointment directly through an NHS dental practice, they should contact NHS111.