HC Deb 06 February 1997 vol 289 cc725-6W
Mr. Jon Owen Jones

To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the most common laboratory difficulties involved in diagnosing whether a patient is suffering from C group meningitis. [13018]

Mr. Horam

[holding answer 27 January 1997]: Pre-treatment with antibiotics is the main cause of difficulty in diagnosing meningococcal infection. New molecular techniques currently being developed will help overcome this difficulty. A further difficulty is that the organism may be slow to grow which can delay diagnosis.

Mr. Jones

To ask the Secretary of State for Health on what occasions in the last five years a vaccination programme against type C meningitis has been commenced before there is an established strain link between the cases involved. [13013]

Mr. Horam

[holding answer 27 January 1997]: Meningococcal immunisation programmes are advised only when the epidemiological evidence supports a link between the cases and at least one case has been identified as group C infection. Data on meningococcal immunisation programmes have been collected centrally only for the period since April 1995. We are aware of three community and 10 schools' meningococcal immunisation programmes in the period 1 April 1995 to 31 March 1996. Data are collected each March for the preceding full year. We are aware that all three community immunisation programmes and five of the school programmes were linked by the same strain.

Mr. Jones

To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will estimate how long it currently takes, on average, for a microbiology laboratory test to identify whether a patient is suffering from the C group of meningitis. [13015]

Mr. Horam

[holding answer 27 January 1997]: When alive meningococcus is isolated from a case—currently about 60 per cent. of cases—provisional confirmation of the serogroup as "C" can usually be made within 24 hours. Confirmation of this provisional typing will take longer. Quite frequently a meningococcus is not isolated, usually as a consequence of successful pre-hospital antibiotic treatment by the general practitioner, and confirmation of the "C" strain can then be done only by molecular methods at a reference laboratory. It cannot be achieved in all cases, and takes up to two weeks. In some cases, molecular methods do not provide a diagnosis and serological tests may then show evidence of infection several weeks after the acute episode.