Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is committed to improving Scotland’s lung cancer early detection rates – this is reflected in our ongoing £42 million Detect Cancer Early (DCE) Programme. Since the Programme began in 2012, there’s been a 31.0% increase in stage 1 lung cancer diagnoses in most deprived areas of Scotland and work will continue to further improve this position.

Reducing the health inequality gap remains a priority for the Scottish Government. To date, over £2.7 million has been committed to Health Boards and third sector organisations, through the Scottish Government's Health Inequalities Fund, to fund projects targeted at reducing inequalities in access to the three cancer screening programmes and improve screening uptake amongst groups least likely to participate.

I refer the Member to the answer to question S5W-25953 on 6 November 2019. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

The average number of funded level 3 beds in Intensive Care and Combined Unitsin Scotland for each year in the period 2014-2018 is included in the following table. Combined units also contain level 2 HDU beds, these are not shown in the following table.

The following table gives the total number of deaths in all beds (level 2 or level 3) in Intensive Care and Combined units across Scotland by NHS board of treatment for the period 2016-2018.

Proton Beam Therapy is currently available to patients through the NHS. However, due to the highly specialised nature of the treatment, there are only a few centres that can offer this kind of intervention. Scottish cancer patients who require this treatment are referred to appropriate specialist centres out with Scotland. Around 30 patients were referred last year to six different specialist centres. All costs associated with this referral are covered by central NHS Scotland funding.

The information is not held centrally by the Scottish Government, and should be requested from NHS Boards.

The Scottish Government provides funding to support dementia research via a number of mechanisms.

• Direct funding of research projects and fellowships submitted to the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) funding panels for consideration. In common with all other applications, those in dementia go through CSO's external independent expert review process to enable funding decisions to be made based on the quality and importance of the proposed research. The funding level is subject to quality and number of applications submitted. CSO also has a programme of collaboration with research charities to co-fund research, including in dementia. In this instance the charity may take the lead in organising the independent external review process.
• Funding of the NHS Research Scotland Dementia and Neuroprogressive Disease Research Network since 2008/9 (currently £506,000 per annum) to promote a culture of clinical research in dementia and ND across Scotland and to maximise patient recruitment to high quality clinical studies.
• Further indirect support is provided though an annual contribution (currently around £10m) to the major National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) programmes that cover a broad range of health research including dementia research across the UK.

The following table provides a breakdown of CSO funding in dementia research through project/fellowship funding and the annual funding provided to the NRS Dementia and Neuroprogressive Disease research network. Project and fellowship funding is allocated to the year in which the funding commitment was made. Data was extracted from the CSO database and covers research on Alzheimer’s Disease, other cause dementia and studies on cognitive ageing / decline.

The breakdown of the £10.6 million cost of the Edinburgh Tram Inquiry to 31st August 2019 is as follows.

We support the development of powerchair and para-football and provide funding to the Scottish FA, through sport scotland, to encourage everyone to play our national game.

sport scotland provides direct funding to Scottish Disability Sport, the co-ordinating body for all sports for people of all ages and abilities with a physical, sensory and learning disability. sport scotland’s investment in many Sports Governing Bodies also supports sport-specific activity for participants with disabilities.

The Scottish Government welcomes this new report from the Red Cross and officials will be meeting with the organisation this month to discuss further. We are committed to ensuring that discharge planning procedures are improved across Scotland and that people experience a seamless journey through the health and social care system.

To drive improvement, a cross sector team of health and social care professionals, including clinicians, social work and the Scottish Ambulance Service will provide focussed support on unscheduled care and delayed discharges. This will contribute to the delivery of the proposals in the Ministerial Strategic Group for Health and Community Care's review of progress with integration.