§ Mr. Willie Hamiltonasked the Secretary of State for Social Services if he will publish a table showing the regional incidence of methaemoglobinaemia over the last 10 years.
§ Mrs. CurrieThis information is not available as there is no requirement to report cases of methaemoglobinaemia, and they are not identifiable in routinely collected health statistics.
However, it is an extremely rare condition. There has been no response to DHSS requests to medical practitioners in 1976 and 1981 for notification of any confirmed cases of infantile methaemoglobinaemia. Indeed, we know of only some 14 cases attributable to nitrate in drinking water in the past 36 years, and these were mostly suspected rather than proven. The last reported and confirmed case was in 1972.