Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent progress he has made in preventing the Ebola virus spreading in the UK.

The Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has advised that the overall risk to the public remains low. The United Kingdom has robust, well-developed and well-tested public health and National Health Service systems for preventing and managing infectious diseases including any imported case of this type of disease, supported by a wide range of experts and specialist units. NHS England has recently received assurance from all NHS acute and ambulance chief executives of their readiness for an Ebola case.

Screening arrangements are in place at the UK’s main ports of entry for people travelling from the affected regions. Screening involves temperature checks and a questionnaire asking about current health, recent travel history and any contact with Ebola patients. Passengers are required to provide contact details and are given advice on what to do and whom to contact should they develop symptoms.

In addition to weekly meetings with the Devolved Administrations at official level, I hold regular meetings with the health minister counterparts in the Devolved Administrations on UK Ebola preparedness and response.

A number of national and local multi-agency exercises have been conducted in recent months to test operational resilience and provide assurance of Ebola preparedness. This included a recent exercise involving all four nations of the UK. The case of the British nurse recently returned from Sierra Leone demonstrated that the systems put in place across the UK to prepare for and respond to a case of Ebola worked well. In the light of that case, Public Health England has reviewed and further strengthened its screening protocols to ensure that anyone from a higher risk group who feels unwell at the time of screening will be reassessed. Advice will also be sought from an infectious diseases specialist and the passenger will be referred for testing if appropriate. The screening centres at Heathrow were viewed first-hand by the Chief Medical Officer and myself on 1 January 2015 and all arrangements, including the revised protocols, were found to be working well. We will continue to keep screening arrangements under review and look to improve or strengthen the process as guided by expert clinical advice.