Blood: Viral Diseases

(asked on 1st May 2019) - View Source

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 potential merits of trialling opt-out testing for (a) hepatitis C, (b) HIV and (c) other blood-borne viruses in emergency care settings.


Answered by
Seema Kennedy Portrait
Seema Kennedy
This question was answered on 13th May 2019

NHS England specialised commissioning does not run a national programme of opt-out screening within emergency care settings. NHS England is aware of some hospital trusts that have implemented an opt-out screening protocol within emergency care settings, but this is not routine practice in all hospitals. Where opt-out is implemented there are posters on display advising patients, attending the emergency department, that they will be tested unless they tell their attending clinician that they want to opt-out and do not wish to be tested.

Opportunistic testing for blood-borne diseases may also occur in non-traditional healthcare settings frequently used by people who inject drugs (or used to), such as doctors’ surgeries, community pharmacies, prisons and sexual health centres.

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