Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government is aware that there is still some substantial work to do to fully implement the recommendations of the review and would continue to encourage NHS Highland and the local communities to work together to achieve this.

While NHS Boards hold the direct responsibility for staffing, we are providing direct investment to assist boards, including those in the South Scotland region, in growing and retaining their workforce. This has included funding to support the recruitment of up to 750 nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals from overseas before April 2023.

In addition, our National Workforce Strategy sets out the actions we will take in partnership with Boards to plan, attract, train, employ and nurture the health and social care workforce.

We plan to publish a new cancer strategy in Spring 2023.

The Future Catching Policy (FCP) is being developed to deliver increased selectivity and sustainability across Scotland’s diverse and varied fishing fleet. Once implemented, the FCP will support increased confidence in, and an increased accountability of, Scotland’s fishing fleets. The consultation on the FCP closed last year and analysis of responses is now complete with a full report, and government response, to be published this year.

Preliminary findings from the EAVE II study, led by Public Health Scotland in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh, were published in a preprint article on 7 March 2023. This article presents preliminary analysis of the number of adults aged 18 and over presenting with long COVID in general practice. It uses routinely collected clinical data from almost the entire adult population in Scotland.

Please note that these findings are preliminary and have not yet been peer-reviewed.

This study estimates that, depending on the outcome measure used, between 0.02% to 1.8% of the participant cohort had long COVID at some point over the course of the study (March 2020 to October 2022). The total number of cases identified each year have not been published with the preprint article. However, findings suggest that there was a general increase in new long COVID cases between September 2020 to April 2022, interrupted by a temporary decline between February and May 2021. Findings suggest a general decline in new long COVID cases from April to October 2022. The outcome measures used include, but are not limited to, diagnosis recorded via clinical codes. The article notes that these figures represent a probable under-recording of cases.

For comparison, the estimated prevalence of self-reported (as opposed to clinically diagnosed) long COVID in Scotland from the ONS Covid-19 Infection Survey was 3.53% (95% confidence interval: 3.23% to 3.83%) for the four week period ending 1 October 2022, which is the four-weekly estimate most closely aligned with the end of the study period.

Preliminary findings from this analysis suggest that, across NHS health boards, cases of long COVID were largely proportionate to population shares. However, findings suggest that NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde saw a disproportionately large share of cases, and NHS Lothian saw a disproportionately small share of cases.

Please refer to the preprint article for further details: Identifying Long Covid Using Electronic Health Records: A National Observational Cohort Study in Scotland .

Guidance is provided by the Scottish Government to Health Boards which is publicly available on the following website SHOW - SGHSC - Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorates including guidance on matters in relation to attraction and retention of medical and non-medical staff. The Centre for Workforce Supply, hosted by NHS Education for Scotland works with Health Boards to support the building of workforce capacity.

The Endoscopy and Urology Diagnostic Recovery and Renewal Plan , published in November 2021, is backed by £70m investment. The plan focuses on a number of key areas including Development and Infrastructure Innovation and Redesign to provide alternatives to traditional endoscopy. This includes Capsule Colonoscopy Endoscopy ( CCE ), Computer Tomography ( CT ), Cytosponge and Transnasal Endoscopy ( TNE ).

In Urology, alternative delivery pathways include Diagnostic Urology Hubs and 'One Stop' clinics, such as the Urology Hub at Forth Valley Royal Hospital, which was opened in July 2022.

The Scottish Government does not hold the detailed information centrally, the member should contact NHS Boards directly.

In May 2019, the then Cabinet Secretary visited the Isle of Skye, with Sir Lewis Ritchie to undertake a review of progress. Then in May 2022, the current Cabinet Secretary visited the Isle of Skye, for the official opening of the Broadford Hospital. No formal discussions took place at that time, regarding the independent external review of Skye, Lochalsh and South West Ross.

We are considering how to address access to medicines for the treatment of some cancers in the draft new cancer strategy and action plan. Safe, realistic and effective treatment is one of our key ambitions.

Pandemics and infectious disease threats feature in both Scottish and UK risk assessments which are used to inform our response to these risks.