Chamber and committees

Anthrax

Bacillary Dysentery

Chickenpox

Cholera

Diphtheria

Erysipelas

Food Poisoning

Legionellosis

Leptospirosis

Lyme Disease

Malaria

Measles

Membranous Croup

Meningococcal Infection

Mumps

Paratyphoid Fever

Plague

Poliomyelitis

Puerperal Fever

Rabies

Relapsing Fever

Rubella

Scarlet Fever

Smallpox

Tetanus

Toxoplasmosis

Tuberculosis (Respiratory and Non-Respiratory)

Typhoid Fever

Typhus Fever

Viral Haemorrhagic Fevers (including Yellow Fever)

Viral Hepatitis

Whooping Cough

CSO supports research indirectly through its allocation of some £30 million annually to the NHS in Scotland.

We are aware of eight research projects on myalgic encephalomyelitis which are either taking place or have recently been completed in Scotland. Details of these are available on the National Research Register (NRR), a copy of which is in the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe).

I announced on 10 April my decision to accept the expert advice from the National Screening Committee that the NHS in Scotland should not offer a population-wide screening programme for this condition. I wrote to the member that day with a copy of the News Release and the text of the letter which the Department had sent to Scottish Heart at Risk Testing, a voluntary body concerned with promoting awareness of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

The National Screening Committee took the view that on the basis of our present knowledge, screening should not be undertaken because a significant number of those diagnosed by the current tests will go on to live a normal life span and will have been excluded unnecessarily from sporting and other activities. As there would also be employment and insurance consequences following such a diagnosis, the disadvantages outweigh the possible benefits of screening.

There is no precise screening test at present, as there are variable definitions of the degree of enlargement of the heart muscle which constitutes a positive diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Testing by echocardiography (ECG) may miss some young people at risk of sudden death and cause potentially unnecessary distress to those whose life spans will not be affected.

For every death, a doctor has to complete a medical certificate of cause-of-death. The "informant" (the person, generally a relative of the deceased, who has the duty of giving information to the local registrar of births, deaths and marriages to enable the death to be formally registered) hands over this medical certificate to the registrar who transcribes the cause-of-death details on to the register entry. Local registrars generally capture register-entry information electronically (now 96%) and send it to the Registrar General in Edinburgh, who compiles Scotland's cause-of-death statistics. Cause-of-death figures for 1998 and earlier years are available on the website of the General Register Office for Scotland, http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk. The Registrar General makes an annual report each summer to the Parliament for the preceding calendar year, including cause-of-death information. The Registrar General sent a paper copy of his most recent (1998) Annual Report to each MSP last summer, after it was published on 27 July 1999.

Once the Scottish Social Services Council is set up following the White Paper Aiming for Excellence, priority groups of care staff will be registered on a consistent national basis. This process will involve police checks. We hope to introduce the necessary legislation to set up the Council when parliamentary time permits.