Whooping Cough

Lord Patel Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

On 4 March 2024, the UK Health Security Agency launched a new multimedia marketing campaign across England to remind parents and carers of the risk of their children missing out on protection against serious diseases that are re-emerging in the country, with an urgent call for action to catch up on missed vaccinations. NHS England is implementing best practice, vaccinating pregnant women opportunistically during maternity appointments wherever possible and ensuring that advice on vaccination in pregnancy is being offered across antenatal and primary care settings. I can reassure the noble Baroness, and indeed the House, that NHS England is doing all it can to contact pregnant women to make sure they are vaccinated themselves, which will help the unborn child.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, the incidence of whooping cough is cyclical; that is well known. In some years, the incidence rises, as it is doing this year not only in the United Kingdom but in several other European countries—countries that have far better health systems that perform far better than our health service. The difference is that the measures they have taken to curtail this and reduce the prevalence are working far better than our own strategy, so we need to re-examine our strategy. So my question is: what other public health measures are we considering to effectively address the rising rate that is occurring in this country, which is now falling in other countries where it was rising?

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

The noble Lord, as always, makes a very powerful point and he is exactly right. Whooping cough is cyclical. The last time this country experienced an outbreak was 2016 and we were due to have another outbreak in 2021. As noble Lords will know, we suffered from Covid lockdown and because of the isolation, it went down. So we were due one in 2020-21, and the reason that this outbreak is more powerful is because of social distancing during Covid—and the outbreak is the most severe, as the noble Baroness said, in a long time. That is the explanation—it is cyclical, we had lockdown and we are now in the middle of the severe outbreak.

As for the noble Lord comparing our health service to others throughout Europe, he is exactly right. The UK has the most extensive immunisation programme in the world but, as he rightly points out, we have to communicate that to all the population. NHS England works with UKHSA and the regions to continuously review opportunities to improve uptake and coverage of all NHS routine immunisation programmes, sharing and spreading best practice in what has worked. But we can always learn from other countries to make the NHS even better.