Chamber and committees

Question reference: S6W-00875

Asked by: Sue Webber, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: 18 June 2021
Current status: Answered by Angela Constance on 5 July 2021

Question

To ask the Scottish Government how many children in each (a) local authority and (b) NHS board area have been born drug-dependent in each year since 2007.

Answer

The numbers of babies reported in the Scottish Birth Record (SBR) as having a diagnosis of ‘foetus and newborn affected by maternal use of drugs of addiction’ or ‘neonatal withdrawal symptoms from maternal use of drug addiction’ in Scotland during the period 2006-07 to 2016-17 are provided in the following table. The figures presented cover three year aggregates to avoid disclosing small numbers in each individual year. Further suppression of small numbers has been applied as per ISD’s Statistical Disclosure Control policy in order to protect patient confidentiality.

Number of babies affected by maternal use of drugs, financial three year aggregates, 2006-07-2008-09 to 2014-15-2016-17 1,2,3

	2006/07-2008/09	2007/08-2009/10	2008/09-2010/11	2009/10-2011/12	2010/11-2012/13	2011/12-2013/14	2012/13-2014/15	2013/14-2015/16	2014/15-2016/17
Scotland 4	427	767	979	1039	1059	1073	994	875	774
NHS Board
Ayrshire & Arran	33	56	70	57	60	56	53	40	39
Borders	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Dumfries & Galloway	21	34	49	42	39	40	43	40	25
Fife	24	31	46	56	60	52	35	39	40
Forth Valley	29	52	72	67	76	74	95	74	62
Grampian	98	147	163	153	189	220	206	179	169
Greater Glasgow & Clyde	97	194	252	293	268	245	190	159	137
Highland	11	24	35	46	42	43	40	42	39
Islands 5	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*	*
Lanarkshire	34	64	81	90	100	113	97	84	78
Lothian	50	85	102	104	102	113	100	88	72
Tayside	27	74	102	125	118	110	115	106	90
Unknown	*	*	*	*	*	*	13	14	13

1 - To minimise the potential risk of disclosure, data has been grouped up into 3 year rolling aggregates.

2 - Figures relate to the total number of individual babies, not to the number of discharges. A baby may be admitted to and discharged from neonatal care more than once.

3 - Drug misuse is defined using the following International Classification of Disease (10th Revision) codes : P04.4, P96.1.

4 - Includes births where NHS Board area of residence is unknown or outside Scotland.

5 - Islands includes: Orkney, Shetland and Western Isles.

* Indicates values that have been suppressed due to the potential risk of disclose and to help maintain patient confidentiality.

Source: SBR, ISD Scotland

‎ In 2017 the Scottish Birth Record (SBR) publication was revised and no longer includes detailed information on drug use during pregnancy, equivalent data for 2011/12 to 2019/20 have been provided by the Public Health Scotland Maternity and Births team.

For information on children in each NHS board who are affected by a mothers use of drugs is published here:

https://www.scotpho.org.uk/media/2035/births-in-scottish-hospitals-2019-20.xlsx

For information on children in each local authority/council area who are affected by a mother’s use of drugs is published here:

https://www.opendata.nhs.scot/dataset/births-in-scottish-hospitals/resource/66b537ce-cdd4-4313-8e25-4e819e25d0a5

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