Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of simplifying the administration of pain relief for sickle cell patients.

No specific assessment has been made.

Specialist haemoglobinopathy teams (SHTs) and haemoglobinopathy co-ordinating centres (HCCs) are required to submit data via the Specialised Services Quality Dashboard on the percentage of patients given pain relief within 30 minutes of presentation with a sickle cell crisis, as per the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines. The data does not include patients attending non-specialist haemoglobinopathy providers and further work is required to improve the accuracy of the data submission before it can be used to assess compliance.