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To ask the Scottish Executive what guidance is provided to NHS boards regarding exceptional prescribing arrangements in relation to funding orphan and ultra-orphan medicines not recommended by the Scottish Medicines Consortium.
Questions and Answers
Date answered:
26 January 2010
To ask the Scottish Executive whether the Hospital Medicines Utilisation Database will allow for comparisons in the uptake of medicines in Scotland and between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom and Europe.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) investigate all reports of suspected breaches of medicines legislation, including matters relating to Article 81.
In recent times, there has been an increasing focus on the provision of care in more homely settings, closer to people’s homes, and more preventative medicine. All those factors will be taken into consideration—Inaudible.
Some very high-quality work has been done on a very small scale. Colleagues in veterinary medicine do a lot on the survey of wild animal and farmed animal populations, in terms of the range of pathogens that they contain.
We are not talking about something that can be checked for with just a blood test; it is a bit more tricky and gets to the heart of medicine. GPs and those in healthcare upstream—those in hospitals—are getting the guidance.
We know each other of old, Stewart, so I am tempted to match that: during lockdown, I discovered that my grandfather worked on hedgehogs’ brains in Germany, having qualified at Glasgow, and then spent a career in medicine in China. I concur whole-heartedly.
We have to make sure that the necessary support is in place to respond to any future increase in Covid cases, whether that means staff training and development, securing supplies of key medicines or devices or replenishing our PPE stockpiles.