§ Mr. Ridsdaleasked the Secretary of State for Social Services (1) how many are on the waiting list for urgent and non-urgent cases for each of the hospitals in north-east Essex; and what is the period of time before urgent and non-urgent cases can be dealt with satisfactorily;
(2) how the waiting lists in numbers and time for urgent and non-urgent cases in hospitals in north-east Essex compare with the waiting lists in other hospitals in England and Wales.
§ Mr. MoyleThe information is not held centrally for individual hospitals. For the Colchester health district and England, the numbers of urgent and non-urgent cases waiting for hospital admission at 31st March 1976 were as follows:
history of children prior to the administration of anti-whooping cough vaccinations;
(4) at what level of incidence of brain damage to children following whooping cough vaccination he proposes to review his policy on the vaccination.
§ Mr. Alfred MorrisBefore offering whooping cough vaccine, doctors should satisfy themselves that children are not suffering from any condition which they regard as a contra-indication to vaccination. General guidance is issued from the Department in the form of memoranda and letters from the Chief Medical 549W Officer. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises my right hon. Friend in this field, has the policy of vaccination for whooping cough under regular review.
Children known to be suffering from brain damage should not normally be offered vaccination against whooping cough, although the final decision rests with local medical opinion in the light of all the circumstances of the individual case.
Whooping cough vaccine is usually administered in the form of triple vaccine containing diptheria, tetanus and pertussis components. It is not possible to be sure whether brain damage has resulted from vaccination or is due to an unrelated cause. Even where vaccination has been suspected as the cause of brain damage, it is difficult to determine which of the three components might have been responsible.
For these reasons, although 25 reports of suspected brain damage have been submitted since 1964 to the Committee on Safety of Drugs and its successor, the Committee on Safety of Medicines, it is not possible to confirm that any of them was casually related to the whooping cough vaccine.