Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 19 December 2022 to Question 105556 on Sickle Cell Diseases, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing (a) funding and (b) staffing levels for sickle cell services.

No specific assessment has been made by the NHS England National Specialised Commissioning Team on the potential merits of simplifying the administration of pain relief for Sickle Cell patients or, of increasing funding and staffing levels for sickle cell services. However the National Sickle Pain Group, a sub-group of the Specialised Commissioning Haemoglobinopathies Clinical Reference Group, has produced guidance for hospitals to improve the care for sickle cell patients presenting with acute sickle pain and are working on an associated acute pain audit to measure the time to first analgesia universally across England.

NHS England has launched an end to end sickle cell clinical pathway review led by the Health Inequalities Improvement team. The end to end clinical pathway for patients with Sickle Cell Disease is being reviewed to identify opportunities for delivering improvements. The review is at an early stage but has highlighted a number of opportunities to improve current services, including in relation to workforce, the digitalisation of care plans and general education of the public about the condition.

In addition, NHS England is undertaking an exercise to assess compliance of Specialist Haemoglobinopathy Teams and Haemoglobinopathy Co-ordinating Centres with the respective service specifications which are published on the Haemoglobinopathies Clinical Reference Group webpage.