Chamber and committees

Barriers to attendance are regularly considered by the Scottish Cervical Screening Programme and individual NHS Boards with initiatives taking place across Scotland to look at ways of tackling inequalities of access. The Programme will review the recommendations from the Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust research and work with NHS Boards to take these forward.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) recently advised that self-sampling should not be implemented within the cervical screening programme without further research or pilots to demonstrate its value. The Scottish Government has a clear commitment to increase participation in cervical screening and a number of pieces of work are underway to ensure Scotland contributes to the emerging evidence base. While there are some potentially exciting developments for cervical screening in the pipeline, it’s imperative that the time is taken now to carefully explore the best option(s) that match our circumstances in Scotland, to avoid creating further health disparities.

Health Scotland has published guidance on quitting smoking in pregnancy. The guidance contains the current position on using e-cigs during pregnancy. The Health Scotland guidance is available on the following link.

http://www.healthscotland.com/uploads/documents/26973-iQuit.%20Stopping%20smoking%20when%20you%20are%20pregnant-Sept2018-English.pdf .

The Scottish Government’s advice is not to smoke or vape during pregnancy. However, for those women who feel they need to use nicotine to help quit smoking during pregnancy we would advise using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) instead of e-cigarettes. For those pregnant women who choose to vape, on the basis of current evidence vaping will be less of a risk to the baby than smoking.

The Scottish Government does not support the use of e-cigarettes during pregnancy. Our assessment of what little research exists on the effects of e-cigarettes on pregnant women comes from evidence from adult smokers in general. This suggests that e-cigarettes are likely to be significantly less harmful to a pregnant woman and her baby than continuing to smoke. Most of the risk from smoking comes from second hand smoke, which on the basis of current evidence is not a risk factor associated with vaping. More research is required to be able to assess if using e-cigarettes during pregnancy poses specific risks.

This information is not held centrally.

In 2015 the Scottish Government published a ‘Scottish National Research Framework for Problem Drug Use and Recovery’. This document was compiled with the contribution of academics and stakeholders from across the country.

Following the publication of the Framework, Scottish Government officials worked with the Scottish Funding Council to create a dedicated collaborative research infrastructure for drug use research in Scotland. Established in August 2017 and funded by the Scottish Government, the Drugs Research Network for Scotland (DRNS) aims to develop collaborative research across disciplines, organisations and countries to generate high-quality evidence that will inform developments in police and practice.

DRNS is a collaboration of: academics; peer researchers; policy-makers; service planners & providers; people with lived / living experience of problem drug use; and affected family members.

Work has been ongoing to address this issue since the publication of the 2013 report. Actions have included:

• The Drug Strategy Delivery Group (advisory group put in place following publication of Road to Recovery strategy) along with representation from Scottish Government commissioned organisations; ADP’s; NHS; and other partners; convened an event in April 2014 which looked at all the groups in the Scottish drugs landscape, and also the governance structures in place, to ensure that institutional memory and governance were given necessary importance.
• We have worked with Scottish and UK based colleagues around the development of the updated ‘Drug misuse and dependence: UK guidelines on clinical management’, which was re-issued in 2017 and provides comprehensive clinical guidelines around the use of ORT.
• We have worked with Health Scotland around their publication of a review of literature on reducing drug related deaths. The scope of the review was to respond to the specific risks and needs identified for Scotland’s vulnerable ageing cohort of people with a drug problem.
• Going forward, we are working with Health Scotland around the development of a monitoring and evaluation framework which will sit alongside our new alcohol and drugs strategy to evaluate the proposed commitments and actions. This document will be published in the coming months.

Waiting Times Improvement funding has been allocated to each Health Board based on an assessment of demand where pressures are impacting on patient access to treatment and care.

We are making over £100 million available in 2019/20 across all health boards to tackle long waiting times in all specialties including chronic pain services. This funding will be used to increase capacity in the system, for example by recruiting additional staff, running evening and weekend clinics and additional theatre sessions with the aim of meeting the standard of 95% of outpatients waiting less than 12 weeks and 100% of inpatients/day cases waiting less than 12 weeks by March 2021.

Officials are working closely with all NHS Boards to ensure that robust plans are in place to reduce the number of patients waiting to be seen for chronic pain treatment. This is supported by the Annual Operational Plan process through which the health boards have submitted plans to substantively and sustainably reduce waiting times.

I refer the member to the answer to question S5W-24706 on 2 September 2019 which is available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/ormain.aspx

The following table details how much NHS board pays to private contractors for hospital catering services; all other hospitals catering costs are covered by the local NHS Board:

The Chief Pharmaceutical Officer for Scotland wrote to all NHS Boards, GPs and community pharmacists (Circular PCA(P) (2019) 18) on 26 August 2019 advising of the latest supply update on all Hormone Replacement Therapy products marketed in the UK.

Any information on current and ongoing supply issues relating to individual drugs or devices is shared by NHS Scotland with the relevant networks within the service to help prescribers and dispensers meet patients’ on-going medical needs. The NHS Scotland Prescribing Advisers’ Network provides support to prescribers on the use of alternative products.