Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the impact of the covid-19 outbreak on sickle cell services.
NHS England worked with the National Haemoglobinopathy Panel and Haemoglobinopathy Coordinating Centres on an expert clinical panel to understand and assess the effect of the pandemic on patients with sickle cell disease. The panel produced a range of policies and clinical guidelines on the treatment of haemoglobinopathy patients during the first wave of the pandemic. Regional commissioning teams worked directly with Haemoglobinopathy Coordinating Centres and Specialised Haemoglobinopathy Teams to understand and resolve localised impacts on service delivery.
The Haemoglobinopathy Clinical Reference Group undertook two national lessons learned exercises to understand the impact on sickle cell patients. This identified that services had adapted to different ways of supporting patient care, with some trusts reporting a significant decrease in patients attending their appointments in-person as they were now being seen virtually.