§ 35. Mr. PatnickTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement outlining his Department's latest initiatives in the field of preventive medicine.
§ Mr. MellorThe Government recognise the essential role of preventive medicine in sustaining and improving people's health and have recently given priority to major initiatives such as the introduction and promotion of the MMR vaccine, the implementation of screening programmes for breast and cervical cancer and important health education campaigns on AIDS, drug abuse and coronary heart disease. We intend to develop these areas of work further and have just announced major new initiatives to combat alcohol misuse and teenage smoking, which we hope to halve by 1993, and on prevention of cancer in conjunction with the European Year of Information on Cancer.