Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts
Tuesday 23rd October 2012

(12 years, 1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Jeremy Hunt Portrait Mr Hunt
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The answer is that we are doing quite a lot—a good booklet, “Managing Medicines in Schools and Early Years Settings”, goes around schools, and there are other resources for schools—but we need to do more. We will be announcing a diabetes action plan, a long-term conditions outcomes strategy and a cardiovascular disease outcomes strategy, which will go further to address the issues that my hon. Friend raises.

Keith Vaz Portrait Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
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I declare my interest as someone who has type 2 diabetes and welcome what the Secretary of State says. However, according to the latest report, another 700,000 people will contract the disease by 2020, and 80% of amputations are avoidable. Could he ensure that this very important subject is on the agenda of local clinical commissioning groups?

Jeremy Hunt Portrait Mr Hunt
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I certainly can. The number of diabetes sufferers overall will go up from about 3.7 million, which is already 5% of the population, to 4.4 million. We need to do a lot better in how we look after people with long-term conditions if the NHS is to be sustainable. We can also do a lot to transfer the individual care of people who have diabetes through things such as technology, which I will look into carefully.