§ Dr. GibsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he has estimated the number of patients exposed to surgical instruments possibly contaminated with vCJD in each of the last five years. [41804]
§ Yvette CooperNo. Because of the many uncertainties surrounding this issue—including the incubation period of vCJD and the difficulties of tracking individual instruments—we do not consider it feasible to make such an estimate. The risk assessment therefore did not predict the scale of any secondary epidemic of vCJD, instead, it developed different scenarios to address the various uncertainties—including the standard of decontamination—and gaps in our knowledge about vCJD.
The advice we had from the spongiform encephalopathology advisory committee was that good decontamination is key in reducing the risk of person to person transmission of vCJD via surgical instruments. This was confirmed by the risk assessment. As a result of the work we did last year on improving decontamination, all national health service hospitals in England have access to decontamination services of an acceptable standard.