Asthma: Medical Equipment

(asked on 5th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many asthma inhalers have been issued in (a) Lewisham borough, (b) London and (c) England to (i) children and (ii) adults in each of the last 10 years.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 13th February 2019

The NHS Business Services Authority does not hold a complete data set for patient level data as age data is not held for all patients. As the medical condition is not available on or captured from the prescription form we are unable to identify the reason for why an inhaler is prescribed. Our organisational hierarchy does not include boroughs and so we cannot group data at this level.

A total figure for all medication used to treat respiratory conditions has been provided. The data does not distinguish between conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and also may contain non-inhaler medication. Regional data is only available from January 2014.

The following table shows the number of prescription items used to treat respiratory conditions by calendar year.

Calendar Year

England Items

London Area Items

Lewisham Clinical Commission Group Items

2014

52,263,507

5,398,929

192,551

2015

53,111,230

5,409,083

192,893

2016

54,035,419

5,500,890

196,294

2017

53,991,507

5,478,939

196,831

2018 (not including December)

49,029,913

4,912,130

176,739

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