Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to fund nationwide roll-out of medical drone technologies.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The NHS Long Term Plan is bringing new technologies into the National Health Service to improve patient care and save lives, and we continue to support testing of innovations such as convenient, faster technology to help frontline staff to give people world-leading treatment. This includes supporting NHS staff through the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme, run by the Accelerated Access Collaborative, to develop their own innovative ideas, for example exploring the potential use of autonomous drone delivery systems within healthcare.
Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of using medical drone technologies to deliver personal protective equipment during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
As part of our national effort to ensure critical personal protective equipment (PPE) is delivered to the frontline, we rolled out a PPE portal in collaboration with eBay, Clipper and Royal Mail through which primary and social care providers could access emergency PPE. The PPE Portal’s customers currently include general practitioner practices, optometrists, dentists, pharmacies, children’s social care homes and secure homes, children’s residential special schools, resident social care providers and domiciliary care providers. Over 191 million items of PPE have been delivered through the Portal.
Our PPE Strategy (published 28 September) commits us to start transitioning to a future model next year that is both resilient (able to respond to any demand surges related to COVID-19 or another pandemic threat) and proportionate. Key considerations for the model beyond March 2021 include addressing how best to distribute PPE.
Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reasons the Government has purchased £5 million worth of hydroxychloroquine before clinical trials have proved the effectiveness of that drug against covid-19.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department has procured supplies of hydroxychloroquine to support nationally prioritised United Kingdom clinical trials. In addition, the Department has been securing additional supplies of a number of medicines, including hydroxychloroquine, which would ensure sufficient stocks are available to be rapidly deployed for National Health Service patients should clinical trial evidence show it to be safe and effective to do so. The Department continues to review supply requirements as further clinical evidence becomes available.
Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of prohibiting gay and bisexual men from donating their plasma to a trial to provide treatment for covid-19.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No individual is excluded from giving blood, platelets or plasma based on sexual orientation. However, all men must wait three months after having sexual contact with another man before donating. This is based on expert advice from the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs.The three-month deferral period is to reduce the risk of any very recently acquired infections not being detected on screening and further tests. For that reason, the current donor selection guidelines remain in place for the convalescent plasma donation programme.
The Equality Act 2010 states that blood services do not contravene anti-discrimination legislation by excluding people from donating blood as long as this exclusion or deferral is based on a reasonable and reliable assessment of risk to the public.
We recognise that people want to be considered as individuals as much as possible. Separately to the convalescent plasma trial, NHS Blood and Transplant are already working collaboratively with LGBT+ groups on blood donation, through the FAIR (For Assessment of Individualised Risk) steering group. The FAIR group is using an evidence-based approach to explore if a more individualised blood donation risk assessment can be safely and practically introduced, while ensuring the safe supply of blood to patients.