Chamber and committees

Questions and answers

Parliamentary questions can be asked by any MSP to the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. The questions provide a means for MSPs to get factual and statistical information.

Written questions must be answered within 10 working days (20 working days during recess)
Other questions such as Topical, Portfolio, General and First Minister's Question Times are taken in the Chamber

Urgent Questions aren't included in the Question and Answers search. There is a SPICe fact sheet listing Urgent and emergency questions.

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Question reference: S6W-08300

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 12 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what recent actions it has taken to promote public awareness of Lyme disease, including its prevention and symptoms.

The Scottish Government is committed to continuing its work on raising awareness of Lyme disease and ticks.

The public awareness sub-group, established following roundtable events in April and June 2021, includes a wide range of representatives, from organisations including Visit Scotland, the Lyme Resource Centre, and Ramblers Scotland. The group has met several times and has most recently developed key messages for the Community Pharmacy Public Health Messaging Poster Campaign which will run for a 4 week period from 30 May 2022.

In addition, the Scottish Government will continue to use its own platforms to highlight the need to be tick aware and to set out the signs and symptoms of possible infection.

The Group is considering further options for short- and long-term strategies to implement messaging around Lyme disease, including the use of appropriate signage for visitors to parks and other recreational areas, together with messaging for the wider public. All materials produced, or campaigns undertaken will be designed around the key messages of; identification, how to protect yourself, and safe removal of ticks, as well as signs and symptoms of possible Lyme disease infection and where to seek treatment.

Question reference: S6W-08301

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 12 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what measures are being taken to ensure that visitors to parks and other areas for outdoor recreation are aware of the risk of Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases.

Question reference: S6W-08302

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 29 April 2022
Current Status: Answered by Maree Todd on 12 May 2022

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on whether suitable signage in parks and other outdoor recreational areas should be required to include information about the appropriate steps that a visitor can take to prevent tick bites, how to identify Lyme disease, and where to seek treatment.

Question reference: S5W-31031

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Friday, 31 July 2020
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 24 August 2020

To ask the Scottish Government how many visits the NHS Lyme disease webpage has had since it was created; how traffic is monitored on the website to measure its effectiveness of use; how it measures the effectiveness of the NHS Lyme disease webpage, and what data it can provide to show how it monitors this.

NHS inform is Scotland's national health information service, which aims to provide the people in Scotland with accurate and relevant information to help them make informed decisions about their own health and the health of the people they care for. The website contains two pages related to Lyme disease.

As at 13 August 2020, the main Lyme Disease page has had 343,421 views since 1 January 2017. An additional page, 'Avoiding bugs and germs outdoors', which also contains information relating to Lyme Disease, has had 12,525 views since 15 June 2017.

Additionally, the current Health Protection Scotland Lyme Disease web page went live on the 21 March 2019. Since that date, there have been 8328 visits to the page.

Both NHS inform and the HPS website use Google Analytics to collect information about how visitors use the websites. The Google Analytics data is used for trend analysis of traffic to the website.

Question reference: S5W-31181

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 12 August 2020
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 24 August 2020

To ask the Scottish Government what plans it has to extend the NHS Highland Lyme App Project to other NHS boards.

Question reference: S5W-29007

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 May 2020
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 20 May 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-27798 by Joe Fitzpatrick on 18 March 2020, what social media campaigns have been run to raise awareness of Lyme disease since summer 2018.

The Scottish Government issued a tweet to raise awareness of Lyme Disease Awareness Month in May 2019 as a reminder to walkers when out and about in the countryside https://twitter.com/scotgovhealth/status/1126059581346603008

The material from the social media campaign the Scottish Government, along with key partners, ran throughout the summer of 2018 to encourage young people to enjoy the outdoors, whilst promoting outdoor health messages such as checking for and removing ticks safely is still available and can be reused by anyone wishing to highlight the need for vigilance when outdoors using the tags @ramblersscot, @youngscot, @nature_scot #TopTipsToFightTicks, #HealthyOutdoors #AGreatDayOut.

Question reference: S5W-29008

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 11 May 2020
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 20 May 2020

To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to question S5W-27798 by Joe FitzPatrick on 18 March 2020, what measures are being taken to raise awareness of Lyme disease to people who may be out walking more now due to a lift in restrictions due to COVID-19.

Question reference: S5W-27798

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Monday, 09 March 2020
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 18 March 2020

To ask the Scottish Government whether it has used social media to raise awareness of Lyme Disease and active ways to avoid contracting it, and, if so, what handles, phrases, hashtags and words it has used in this regard.

Question reference: S5W-23908

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 June 2019
Current Status: Answered by Joe FitzPatrick on 10 July 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on offering blood tests to anyone considered to be at risk of having contracted Lyme disease.

Question reference: S5W-23909

Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: Wednesday, 19 June 2019
Current Status: Answered by Jeane Freeman on 5 July 2019

To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on setting up a regional or national blood testing centre in the NHS Grampian area, and what support it can offer toward this.

NHS National Services Scotland’s National Services Division (NSD) commission and manage nationally designated specialist services in Scotland. Proposals may be submitted to the National Specialist Services Committee throughout the year.

NSD already commissions the Scottish Lyme Disease and Tick-borne Infections Reference Laboratory. The service, hosted by NHS Highland, provides specialist diagnostic testing for Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections and provides a reference service function for the whole of Scotland.