Chamber and committees

This evidence session is looking at planning for winter and how we can improve outcomes. I am the co-convener of a few cross-party groups on healthcare, including the one on health inequalities, and we know that we need to improve the outcomes for many people. Earlier, we heard from the minister, Maree Todd, about the women’s health plan. Do any of you have specific proposals for improving outcomes, not just for the winter but in the future?

I have a quick final supplementary question. Our notes have a question about food banks. I read the statistic that we have more than 91 independent food banks in Scotland, and we know that food-bank use has increased due to Covid. It is worrying that the issue persists. Will the bill have a strategy to end the need for food banks?

On NHS 24 referrals to the out-of-hours service and the impact on winter planning and capacity, is there a role for the Government, doctors and the bodies representing wider multidisciplinary teams in helping make the public aware of the solutions that need to be put in place to deal with capacity issues? Do we need to manage the public’s expectations better, especially with regard to all the different ways of referring people to services, whether they be GP out-of-hours services or emergency services? Perhaps Dr Buist can respond first of all.

My next question is about avoiding harm. The submission from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine states:

“The data show that for every 67 patients waiting 8-12 hours, one of them ... will come to avoidable harm.”

Obviously, we need to think about how that can be avoided. Data on each harm that occurs is required to be entered into a system so that it can be tracked. I think that it is the Datix system, which I know because I am a former nurse who used to enter adverse events into that system. How do we ensure that our GPs and our doctors have a wider ability to utilise the system to learn so that harm can be avoided in the future?

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. I welcome the speeches that we have heard so far, and I thank Michael Marra for taking my intervention, which I forgot to say at the time.

The financial, social, physical and mental health challenges that people across Scotland have faced during the Covid-19 pandemic have been extremely difficult. Scotland’s young people have felt the effects of the pandemic particularly hard. The pandemic has had a negative impact on people in sectors such as hospitality and tourism, which are hugely important in Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders.

To alleviate the pandemic’s impact, the Scottish Government has benefited young people looking to enter the workforce across Scotland through its investment of £70 million in the young persons guarantee, which offers every 16 to 24-year-old in Scotland the opportunity of a job or apprenticeship, further or higher education, or a training programme or volunteering opportunity. Since it was officially launched in November 2020, funding has been committed to create up to 18,000 training, job and apprenticeship opportunities for young people.

The funding includes £45 million for local partnerships to provide training and employer recruitment incentives, and £13.5 million for colleges, universities and the Scottish Funding Council to provide industry-focused courses, supporting up to 5,000 young people and providing employment support for 500 recent graduates.

The funding has allowed employers in Dumfries and Galloway such as Jas P Wilson, BSW Timber, Alpha Solway and DuPont Teijin Films to increase their numbers of modern apprenticeship places. I have visited all those employers, and I thank them for all the work that they do and for supporting our next generation workforce.

However, I have been contacted by local manufacturers, including Alpha Solway, which I visited two weeks ago, who feel that more work could be carried out to promote manufacturing as a positive career destination. Therefore, I ask the minister to ensure that Skills Development Scotland and Scottish Government officials work with manufacturing firms to ensure that young people are aware of the benefits of a career in Scottish manufacturing. That would also help to improve the resilience of our local manufacturing supply chains.

I welcome the £25 million national transition training fund, which has already helped 10,000 people, including 312 young folks across Dumfries and Galloway, to develop the skills that are required to move into sectors with the greatest potential for future growth.

I have recently been contacted by NFU Scotland, which has highlighted the need for rural skills to be a focus of the fund, as well as for agriculture and rural skills to be highlighted as positive destinations for people of all ages and, in particular, our young people. NFU Scotland believes that schools and career advisers do not promote the farming and food production sectors, which are often perceived as a last resort for less able or academic young people.

The farming sector requires an efficient, effective and user-friendly education and skills system that is responsive to the sector’s current and future needs. That is particularly important because agriculture will play a huge part in tackling the climate emergency. I therefore support all initiatives to ensure that we have a professional rural workforce that is equipped with the necessary skills and knowledge.

Previously, I met George Jamieson, who is a policy manager for NFU Scotland, to talk about NFUS’s report and its recommendations on how to improve the rural workforce, which, increasingly, is an ageing workforce. I have written to the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands about how those recommendations could be taken forward, but I would be grateful if the minister would agree to meet George Jamieson and me to discuss the matter further.

Again, I welcome the debate and the steps that the Scottish Government has taken to support those who have suffered most during the pandemic. I highlight my asks for manufacturing and rural skills.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and I thank Alex Cole-Hamilton for securing it.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues, the need to understand and respond to long Covid is increasingly pressing. We have heard from members about the reported symptoms, such as persistent fatigue, breathlessness and depression, which can be debilitating for many people, and there are many other physical and psychological side effects.

The term “long Covid” is commonly used to describe signs and symptoms that continue or develop after Covid-19. Most evidence is limited and based on small cohorts with short follow-up. I read about research that was published in The Lancet by Dr Lixue Huang and colleagues, who reported 12-month outcomes from the largest cohort of hospitalised adult survivors of Covid-19 so far. They reported that, at one year, Covid-19 survivors

“had more mobility problems, pain or discomfort, and anxiety or depression than control participants ... Fatigue or muscle weakness was the most frequently reported symptom at both 6 months and 12 months, while almost half of patients reported having at least one symptom, such as sleep difficulties, palpitations, joint pain, or chest pain, at 12 months. The study shows that for many patients, full recovery from COVID-19 will take more than 1 year, and raises important issues for health services and research.”

I agree with the contention in the motion that long Covid is a condition of concern.

I was interested to hear about the impact of paediatric long Covid and the work of Dr Binita Kane and Elisa Perego in that regard. There is emerging scientific evidence that a not-insignificant percentage of children develop long-term symptoms following exposure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. I was going to go into more detail about the paediatric research. It is interesting that acute kidney disease, immune dysfunction, lung perfusion defects and on-going inflammatory lung conditions have been reported up to 60 days into the post viral-infection period.

More than 1.1 million people are suffering from long Covid. This morning, I received an email from a constituent, who does not want me to give his name. He said that he is thankful that there is emerging research that will improve understanding of the illness, and he thought that it would be helpful to provide some explanation so that, in this debate, I could talk about the emerging evidence base. He said that cardiopulmonary exercise testing has demonstrated that patients with long Covid suffer from impaired systemic oxygen extraction. Basically, he said that long Covid is not a psychological illness; patients with long Covid cannot get oxygen from their blood to their cells. That results in multi-organ oxygen starvation, which explains their widespread symptoms.

A summary of acute Covid-19 effects includes blood clots and micro blood clots. There is laboratory equipment in Scotland that can test for the thrombogenic coagulation disorders that seem to be appearing in patients who are suffering from long Covid.

I support the approach that Scottish Government is putting in place. Research is still in its initial stages, but we need to take action as soon as possible.

Will the minister take one final intervention?

I appreciate your taking many interventions, minister. I know that we already have diagnostic tests that use fluorescence microscopy and thromboelastography platelet mapping. Is that part of the Government’s work on taking forward management of long Covid?

The member says that no support has been offered and that young people are doing this on their own. However, I have read that Dumfries and Galloway College, with support from the Scottish Government, is actively supporting young people to engage in digital courses. Is that not something that we should recognise?

Cabinet secretary, in your opening comments, you talked about Polish Scots and Pakistani Scots. What work will be done to help to engage women whose first language is not English and who might have experienced complications from mesh implants?