Chamber and committees

For the academic year2005-06 (the latest year for which full data is available), there were 35,105 studentsacross Scotland who were in receipt of Young Students Bursaries.

The number of studentsfrom the Lothians who were in receipt of Young Students Bursaries (YSB) is highlightedin the following table.

StudentsReceiving YSB Support, by Lothians Local Authority Areas, 2005-06

	Students Receiving YSB Support
Total	4,170
East Lothian	475
Midlothian	415
West Lothian	895
Edinburgh	2,385

Source: Student AwardsAgency for Scotland (SAAS).

Notes:

Student numbers arerounded up or down to the nearest five.

Students in the abovetable are those who lived in the Lothians prior to entry to higher education.

In financial year 2005-06, 35organ transplants were undertaken at the transplant unit, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.The figure for 2006-07 was 27.

Organ transplantation servicesare commissioned either regionally or nationally. The transplant unit at the RoyalInfirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) undertakes liver, pancreas and simultaneous kidney/pancreastransplantation on a national basis, and kidney transplantation on a regional basis.The unit also participates in the work of the Scottish Organ Retrieval Team. Thetotal running costs of these services in 2006-07 were around £6.9 million. It isnot possible to calculate the proportion of these costs which relate to NHS Lothianresidents.

NHS Lothian residents are alsoable to benefit from the other transplantation services commissioned nationallyand undertaken in units other than that at RIE, but again it is not possible tocalculate the proportion of these costs which relate to NHS Lothian residents.

Section 1 of the Human Tissue(Scotland) Act 2006 places a duty on the Scottish ministers to promote, support anddevelop programmes of transplantation. It also places a duty on us to promote informationand awareness about the donation for transplantation of parts of a human body.

For many years, the ScottishGovernment has funded advertising campaigns aimed at raising awareness of the needto increase organ donation numbers. The main focus of these campaigns has been toencourage people to add their name to the NHS Organ Donor Register. The 2006act recognises these registrations as forms of authorisation, and is designed toensure that these wishes are respected after death.

As a significant contributionto discharging our duties under the 2006 Act, we intend to make sure that full advantageis taken, in terms of raising awareness of organ donation and encouraging peopleto sign up to the register, of the launch in Edinburgh next month of TransplantAwareness Week, and the holding of the British Transplant Games in the city from26 to 29 July. A budget of £60,000 has been allocated to the Scottish Government’sadvertising and PR activities associated with the games.

The Scottish Government has fundeda teaching resource pack aimed at raising awareness amongst senior school pupilsof the issues associated with organ donation and transplantation. The pack, whichwe expect to be in use in schools across Lothian as well as the rest of Scotland, hasthe potential over time to produce a population with a heightened awareness of thebenefits of transplantation.

At 10 June 2007, there were 135 peoplein the NHS Lothian area registered with UK Transplant as waiting for an organ. Thefigure includes 25 people who are currently suspended from the list, which meansthat they have been removed from the list temporarily, for a reason such as havingbecome too ill to undergo the operation, or being away on holiday.

The most common organ requirementsare kidney, liver and lungs.

For the 296 Lothian patientsregistered on the waiting list between 2000 and 2003, the median waiting time forkidney transplant was 1,472 days, compared to a median waiting time of 836 daysfor the whole of the UK for the same time period.

The Lothian figures for otherorgans are too small to allow for the calculation of meaningful averages. For theUKas a whole, the waiting times for adult first transplants, based on registrationsbetween 2000 and 2004, are as follows:

Heart: 103 days;

Lung: 406 days;

Liver: 95 days;

Kidney/pancreas: 265 days.

The findings of the Review ofScotland’s Colleges have yet to be reported to me by the core group of stakeholdersresponsible for co-ordinating the review. I am grateful for the time and effortwhich stakeholder organisations have invested in the review, and I await their findingswith keen interest. The Executive will respond to them once I and myministerial colleagues have given them careful consideration.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-10400 on 4 March 2008. 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/wa.search.