Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of deaths caused by sepsis; and if he will make a statement.

Since the formation of NHS England’s Cross-System Sepsis Programme Board in 2015, good progress has been made in both recognising sepsis early and improving outcomes.

The Programme Board brings together a group of front-line experts from across the health and care system to take action to improve the identification, diagnosis and management of sepsis in children, young people and adults across the National Health Service.

In April 2018, a National Early Warning Score patient safety alert was issued to support providers to adopt the revised National Early Warning Score (NEWS2) to detect deterioration in adult patients, including those with suspected sepsis.

In September 2018, the Government launched a suspicion of sepsis dashboard. This allows hospitals to identify how many patients are admitted with a severe bacterial infection, are at risk of sepsis, to track their improvements, and supports clinicians in identifying patients who should be screened for sepsis.

The United Kingdom’s five-year national action plan for antimicrobial resistance (AMR), published in January 2019, includes the commitment to develop a real-time patient level data source of patient’s infection, treatment and resistance history which will be used to inform their treatment and the development of interventions to tackle severe infection, sepsis and AMR.