Chamber and committees

Prescription data collected centrally are not patient-specific.

The Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN) Guideline 52 on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) provides clinicians with advice on the diagnostic criteria and assessments for ADHD. It is for clinicians to determine the most appropriate tests for the individual patient.

Guidance was issued to NHS boards and local authorities in March on the interests that Alcohol Action Teams (AATs, formerly Alcohol Misuse Co-ordinating Committees) should bring together. This includes the voluntary sector, alcohol industry, the community and service users. AATs are due to submit local alcohol action plans by April 2003 which will detail how all interests are involved in the work of the team.

Health boards were allocated non-recurring spend of £19 million in 2000-01. Local authorities were allocated £10 million in GAE from 2001-02. New expenditure of £20 million was allocated to local authority and health partnerships from 2002-03 to support the Delayed Discharge Action Plan, announced on 5 March 2002. This sum rises to £30 million from 2003-04. All these allocations supplement existing budgets. Partnerships have been encouraged to take a whole systems approach to tackling delayed discharge, looking at how to make best use of all the resources available to them and to more effectively link together existing services, as well as developing new ones. The Executive has set a target to provide 1,000 extra places in the community in the current financial year. Partnerships are implementing Local Joint Action Plans to achieve their targets and performance will be measured at the point of the April 2003 census. It is not possible to extract from total discharge numbers those discharges funded directly from the above sums.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-32184 today. 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/webapp/search_wa.

New guidance on choice issues is currently being drafted by the Scottish Executive. In addition to this, the Executive's Delayed Discharge Good Practice Resource and Learning and Sharing Network will provide examples of good practice in this and related areas.

Decisions about the level of resources to commit to supporting the implementation of new guidelines and recommendations for NHS primary care treatment are for NHS boards to make in the light of local priorities. However, the resources provided to NHS boards are at record levels with a real increase, averaging 7.8% indicated for 2003-04.

I refer the member to the answer given to question S1W-32184 today. 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/webapp/search_wa.

We understand Audit Scotland has delayed discharge in its forthcoming programme. The remit and detail of the review is for Audit Scotland to determine. The introduction of the Executive's Delayed Discharge Good Practice Resource and Learning and Sharing network will provide on-going examples of good practice and provide support for local authority and NHS partnerships in improving their policy and practice.

Precautionary measures to reduce the theoretical risk of transmission of vCJD through blood or blood products were introduced in 1998 following advice from the UK Committee on Safety of Medicines (CSM) and the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC).There is no scientific evidence that vCJD can be transmitted in humans through blood or blood transfusion. Purely as precautionary measures, and to reduce the theoretical risk to the blood supply, plasma for the manufacture of blood products is currently obtained from non-UK sources (Germany and USA) and donated blood from UK donors is leucodepleted (white blood cells are removed).