Influenza: People with Learning Disabilities

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. The question of the learning difficulty register is undoubtedly one that affects this area enormously. Each GP should have a learning difficulty register where the names of those with learning difficulties are recorded, but it is recognised that those registers are not necessarily always up to date. At their board meeting on 27 June 2019, NHS England and NHS Improvement made a commitment to improve the quality of registers for people with learning disabilities for precisely that reason.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, as it stands, one of the major overseas suppliers of anti-flu vaccine is experiencing delays in getting the vaccine through to the UK. Is that likely to have any major impact on the supply of vaccinations?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord makes an excellent point, and this is an area of concern, but I should like to reassure him that these are not delays; they are in fact phasing. What we learned from last year is that the identification of which particular flu strain is likely to hit the northern hemisphere is not always clear at the beginning of the season, so we have learned to phase the delivery of the vaccines in case the strain of the influenza virus changes or is not as anticipated. This is interpreted by some pharmacologists as a delay, but in fact it is a pragmatic decision made at the very highest levels.