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 with Cabinet colleagues to support women with epilepsy.

The Government is committed to prioritising women’s health, placing women’s equality at the heart of our agenda and ensuring women’s health is never again neglected.

At a national level, there are several initiatives supporting service improvement and better care for patients with epilepsy, including women, such as the RightCare Epilepsy Toolkit, and the Getting It Right First Time Programme (GIRFT) for Neurology and the Neurology Transformation Programme (NTP).

The GIRFT National Specialty Report made recommendations designed to improve services nationally and to support the National Health Service to deliver care more equitably across the country. The National Specialty Report highlighted differences in how services are delivered and offered an unprecedented opportunity to share successful initiatives between trusts to improve patient services nationally.

Building on the GIRFT National Specialty Report, the NTP has developed a model of integrated care for neurology services to support integrated care boards (ICBs) to deliver the right service, at the right time for all neurology patients, including providing care closer to home. A toolkit is being developed to support ICBs to understand and implement this new model.

The RightCare Epilepsy Toolkit includes specific recommendations regarding supporting women with epilepsy. For example, it states that support should be provided to women with epilepsy who are pregnant and those who are of childbearing age which makes clear the risks of certain anti-epileptic drugs that are known to cause birth defects, such as sodium valproate.

The Toolkit also makes clear that it is equally important to provide clear information and guidance on the risks of stopping an anti-epileptic drug treatment, which include Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy, that is not related to causing birth defects, and the risks that poses to the mother and unborn baby to support balanced informed decisions on care.