Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 31 March 2016 to Question 31789, how many people were (a) newly diagnosed and (b) already diagnosed as suffering from inflammatory bowel disease in each year since 2010.

The two main forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Ulcerative colitis only affects the large intestine whereas Crohn's disease affects the whole of the digestive system. Data relating to the total number of people newly and already diagnosed with IBD in each year since 2010 is not collected.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance indicates that ulcerative colitis has an incidence in the United Kingdom of approximately 10 per 100,000 people annually, and a prevalence of approximately 240 per 100,000. This amounts to around 146,000 people in the UK with a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis. In addition to this, there are currently at least 115,000 people in the UK with Crohn's disease.