Chamber and committees

The number of specialist child and adolescent beds over the period 2007-11 is:

There are no beds allocated for children or adolescents in adult psychiatric wards.

However, there are times when it may not be possible for a young person to be admitted to a specialist child and adolescent bed – for example, a crisis admission out of hours where there are concerns for the young person’s safety, or where a specialist facility might be a considerable distance from family support that could help recovery.

If a young person has to be in an adult ward, we expect their care to be specially tailored to their needs with input from specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) staff, taking into account education, social work advocacy and recreation.

Further information on Child and Adolescent beds can be obtained from the ISD website http://www.isdscotland.org/Health-Topics/Hospital-Care/Beds/.

The Scottish Government contracted TNS to carry out an evaluation of the field marketing activity in support of its wider 2012 smoking cessation campaign. This research was conducted amongst visitors to bespoke smoking cessation stands in 34 locations across Scotland. All interviews were conducted over the telephone with people aged over 16 who had agreed to be contacted for research purposes. In total, 282 interviews were completed from 26 January to 4 March 2012.

The regulation of nursing and midwifery is reserved to the UK Government and Scottish Ministers have no statutory functions in setting registration fees for these professions. No discussion has been held with the Nursing and Midwifery Council on this subject.

I refer the member to the answer to question S4W-07966 on 26 June 2012. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The following table shows information on the number of patients undergoing gastric band and gastric bypass operations, where a main diagnosis of obesity has also been recorded, by age band for the financial year ending 31 March 2011.

The data may not include information on NHS patients whose operations were undertaken in independent sector hospitals.

Table 1. Number of Patients undergoing Gastric Band and Gastric Bypass operations by age band in 2010-11

Source: ISD Scotland SMR01.

Note: - denotes no cases.

This information is not held centrally.

The Scottish Government takes advice on vaccination issues from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

The pneumococcal conjugate vaccination is currently being considered by the JCVI and the committee will provide advice in due course, The Scottish Government will consider any recommendations that the JCVI make.

The following is the original answer (published on 11 June 2012); see below.

The Scottish Government takes advice on vaccination issues from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI).

The JCVI Pneumococcal Sub Committee met most recently on 30 May 2012 to consider the possible wider use of pneumococcal conjugate vaccine in clinical risk groups based on impact and cost effectiveness. They concluded that there is no benefit to vaccinating the vast majority of ‘at risk’ individuals with PCV (pneumococcal conjugate vaccine), and it should therefore not be recommended.

The JCVI noted that there will be some patients with severe immunosuppression for whom PCV may be of benefit until herd immunity reaches its highest levels in a few years, as a result of the current infant pneumococcal vaccination programme. The JCVI Pneumococcal Sub Committee will give some examples of this when formally reporting back to the main JCVI Committee.

The Scottish Government will consider these recommendations, along with those of the main JCVI Committee which is due to meet on 13 June 2012.

All new medicines are considered by the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) who operate independently from the Scottish Government. The SMC has robust arrangements in place which concentrate on the introduction of clinically and cost effective medicines to treat all conditions.

Where a medicine is “not recommended” for routine use within the NHS in Scotland by the SMC, NHS board Individual Patient Treatment Request arrangements allow for the clinically-led consideration of such medicines for individual patients in certain circumstances.

Information on the number of Individual Patient Treatment Requests submitted to and approved by each NHS board in each of the last five years is not held centrally.

NHS boards and clinicians are expected to take full account of advice from the Scottish Medicines Consortium and Healthcare Improvement Scotland in the planning and provision of NHS services. Where this advice clarifies that a new medicine is not accepted for routine use within NHSScotland, NHS boards are not expected to make it routinely available. However, NHS boards have arrangements in place for the clinical consideration of “not recommended” medicines for individual patients in certain circumstances (Individual Patient Treatment Requests).

This information is not held centrally.