Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S3W-16030

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 September 2008
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 11 September 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many arrests have been made for illegal snaring in the last year.

Question reference: S3W-16031

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 September 2008
Current Status: Answered by Michael Russell on 11 September 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many prosecutions there have been for illegal snaring in the last year.

Question reference: S3W-16032

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 September 2008
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 10 September 2008

The information on higher education bursaries for 2005-06 and 2006-07 can be found in the Student Awards in Scotland 2006-07 Statistics Publication Notice at the following link:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2007/11/12112008/21.

The 2007-08 data will be published and available in November 2008.

Information on further education bursaries for 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 can be found in the main grant letter, which are published each year by the Scottish Funding Council and available at the following link: http://www.sfc.ac.uk/information/info_circulars/sfc/2008/circulars_2008.html.

Question reference: S3W-16033

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 September 2008
Current Status: Answered by Fiona Hyslop on 10 September 2008

Question reference: S3W-16027

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Thursday, 04 September 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 9 September 2008

Question reference: S3W-14995

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 July 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 11 August 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many cases of clostridium difficile have been reported by NHS Ayrshire and Arran in each year since 2000.

Question reference: S3W-14991

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 July 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 11 August 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many cases of clostridium difficile have been reported by NHS boards in the last year, broken down by month.

Mandatory surveillance on the total number of cases of Clostridium difficile reported by NHS board was introduced in September 2006. This information is collected by Health Protection Scotland (HPS) and is published in quarterly reports on their website.

Information for NHS boards since September 2006 is in the following table;

	October 2006 -December 2006	January 2007 - March 2007	April 2007 - June 2007	July 2007-September 2007	October 2007 - December 2007	Jan 2008 - March 2008
Total number of cases in Scotland	1,213	1,775	1,588	1,459	1,608	1,861

The reports of the independent review on the Clostridium difficile outbreaks at Vale of Leven Hospital and the Health Protection Scotland Six Month Look Back Exercise on Clostridium difficile by NHS boards were published on 7 August. Action plans based on the findings of these reports include a range of actions around surveillance, including:

a standard template to be provided to NHS boards for local surveillance of healthcare associated infection (HAI); surveillance will include control limits and trajectories for reduction of rates/incidence of HAI in local surveillance arrangements.

Web based test reporting for Clostridium difficile will be in place across Scotland by the end of October 2008

HAI incidents and issues recorded on NHS boards risk management reporting systems will be reported to two monthly public board meetings.

Question reference: S3W-14993

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 July 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 11 August 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many cases of clostridium difficile have been reported by NHS Ayrshire and Arran in the last year, broken down by hospital.

The information requested is set out in the table below, broken down by the hospital in which the patient was being cared for at the time of identification. Data is available from April to March of each year.

Hospital	2007-08	2008-09
Ayrshire Central Hospital	60	13
Ailsa Hospital	7	2
Arran War Memorial Hospital	7	4
Ayr	149	49
Biggart	51	19
Crosshouse	298	93
Davidson	3	2
East Ayrshire Community Hospital	7	5
Kirklandside	7	1
Lady Margaret		1
Totals	589	189

Source: NHS Ayrshire and Arran.

These are not necessarily the hospitals in which the Clostridium difficile associated disease was acquired. Also patients may be included more than once if they have a relapse and there has been more than 28 days between symptomatic episodes.

Question reference: S3W-14992

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 July 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 8 August 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many deaths occurred as a result of clostridium difficile in the last year, broken down by (a) NHS board and (b) month.

The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) collects information on the number of deaths that have occurred as a result of Clostridium difficile by NHS board on an annual basis. The information for 2007 has not yet been made available.

Information by NHS board for the period 2000-2006 is presented in the following table;

	Year
NHS Board of Residence	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006
Scotland	38	57	70	73	98	102	164
Ayrshire and Arran	2	7	9	5	12	3	5
Borders	2	-	1	2	-	-	3
Dumfries and Galloway	-	5	1	2	2	8	6
Fife	1	4	3	4	14	13	11
Forth Valley	6	2	3	1	4	8	8
Grampian	2	1	3	6	7	6	9
Greater Glasgow and Clyde	9	15	21	18	26	22	41
Highland	-	1	1	2	1	-	4
Lanarkshire	10	4	9	7	6	13	24
Lothian	6	11	13	20	22	22	40
Orkney	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Shetland	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Tayside	-	7	6	6	4	7	13
Western Isles	-	-	-	-	-	-	-

Source: GROS.

Question reference: S3W-14994

Asked by: Irene Oldfather, MSP for Cunninghame South, Scottish Labour
Date lodged: Monday, 14 July 2008
Current Status: Answered by Nicola Sturgeon on 8 August 2008

To ask the Scottish Executive how many deaths have occurred as a result of clostridium difficile in NHS Ayrshire and Arran in the last year, broken down by hospital.

NHS Ayrshire and Arran have advised that during the period April 2007 to March 2008 there were 14 deaths in NHS Ayrshire and Arran where Clostridium difficile was recorded as a primary cause of death. This is broken down by hospital in the following table:

Hospital	Year (2007)
Ayr Hospital	4
Ayrshire Central Hospital	2
Biggart Hospital	-
Crosshouse Hospital	8
Kirklandside Hospital	-
Total	14

Source: NHS Ayrshire and Arran.

August 2008-09	2009-10	2010-2011	April-July 2011
£170,455	£340,330	£395,661	£141,935