Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government established the short life working group in December 2013.

Membership of the short life working group includes:

Four Scottish Government staff, three clinical staff and one providing secretariat support;

Two patient representatives;

Five NHS clinical and research staff;

One NHS healthcare planner (member selected by NHSScotland); and

Two other patient representatives who have been consulted separately regarding the patient information and consent leaflet (selected by the clinical staff on the Group).

Except where noted, members were selected by the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Frances Elliot.

There has been no specific funding made available to NHS boards to fund the removal of surgical mesh implants for the treatment of pelvic organ prolapse. It is for individual boards to carry out this type of surgery from within existing budgets.

Any individual with concerns about their health should, in the first instance, see their GP. There is a wide range of information and advice available on health and wellbeing from GP practices, community pharmacies and from websites such as NHS Inform and Take Life On.

Health checks for people reaching their 40th Birthday were introduced as a pilot in Grampian in May 2010 and rolled out across Scotland in February 2011. However, due to the poor level of take up and lack of evidence of improvements in health outcomes the programme was considered, on the basis of clinical advice, not to be delivering value for money and the programme was discontinued from the end of March 2013.

Any woman who is worried, or is experiencing adverse side effects, should contact their surgeon or GP for advice.

An expert group is developing a revised patient information and consent leaflet that will go into use in NHSScotland and new care pathways for those women who decide to go ahead with a mesh procedure and for those who have suffered complications.

The Chief Medical Officer wrote to all GPs, through Medical Directors, on 11 July 2013 and 20 December 2013 regarding the investigation and management of patients being treated for urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, including the management of patients with vaginal mesh and tape products. The Scottish Government will be writing again to Medical Directors once the expert group has concluded its work developing the documents and new care pathways.

The Scottish Government will write to NHS Inform following the publication of these documents. NHS Inform provides a health information service and is able to respond to enquiries regarding transvaginal mesh surgery. They can be contacted online at www.nhsinform.co.uk or by using their helpline number: 0800224488.

The budget allocation to NHS 24 for the delivery of the Life Begins at 40 programme was £670,000 between October 2010 and December 2012.

In 2014-15, part of the budget has been allocated to redeveloping the website to provide a more accessible service targeted at working age people in collaboration with the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives. This is expected to go live in 2015. Additional funding has been provided to programmes providing targeted support for people in communities with high levels of inequalities in health.

The Chief Medical Officer wrote to all GPs, through Medical Directors, on 11 July 2013 and 20 December 2013 regarding the investigation and management of patients being treated for urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse, including the management of patients with vaginal mesh and tape products.

The Scottish Government does not hold this information centrally.

NHS Inform provides a health information service which is able to respond to enquiries regarding transvaginal mesh surgery. They can be contacted online or by telephone.

The Scottish Government will write to NHS Inform following publication of the patient information booklet, currently being developed by the expert working group set up to address the issues affecting women who have undergone transvaginal mesh surgery.

The Life Begins at 40 programme was discontinued at the end of March 2013. The decision was taken by me in January 2013 on the basis of advice on the conclusions from the evaluation of the programme that showed low levels of uptake and completion, and no evidence of benefits to health.

The Life Begins at 40 website is included in a scoping exercise to develop a web-based resource for working age people that will provide a range of advice for employees, employers and GPs on health and wellbeing in the workplace and on managing and returning to work from sickness absence.