Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what proportion of people have records contained in the General Practice Research Database; how many patients whose records are in the Database have at least one record of pneumococcal disease (a) in total and (b) in the last year for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.

The main primary care database held by the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) is known as CPRD GOLD (formerly known as the General Practice Research Database, or GPRD). CPRD GOLD contains the anonymised, longitudinal medical records of patients registered with contributing primary care practices across the United Kingdom.

The CPRD GOLD database covers approximately 8.8% of the UK population, including practices in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As of September 2014 there were 684 general practitioner (GP) practices and 13.58 million acceptable (research quality) patients in GOLD, of which 5.69 million are active (still alive and registered with the GP practice). Data has been collected from GP practices since 1987.

A review of the CPRD GOLD database has identified the a total of 15,248 acceptable (research quality) patients with at least one record of pneumococcal disease in CPRD GOLD over the period 1 January 1987 to 30 September 2014 during their up-to-standard registration period. Of these patients, 14,150 had at least one record of pneumococcal pneumonia and 491 patients had at least one record of pneumococcal meningitis.

Over the period 1 October 2013 to 30 September 2014, there were a total of 473 acceptable (research quality) patients with at least one record of pneumococcal disease during their up-to-standard registration period. Of these patients; 445 had a record of pneumococcal pneumonia and 14 had at least one record of pneumococcal meningitis.