Winter Vomiting Disease (Hansard, 27 June 2002)

§ Mr. Hutton

Following a meeting at the North East London health authority (HA) on the 27 May about the outbreak of winter vomiting disease at Whipps Cross University Hospital national health service trust, all trusts in the local health economy made available any spare capacity they had should it have been necessary. Although unused, the Homerton and Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS trusts offered help as did Bans and the London and Newham trusts, both of which took patients from Whipps Cross. As such the local health economy was able to minimise the disruption of services for patients.

The public health team from the local primary care trusts (PCTs) has attended daily incident management team meetings, to control the outbreak. Rapid communication channels are in place between general practitioners and other healthcare professionals in the PCTs.

The public health team at the PCTs also liaised with the communicable disease surveillance centre and the regional epidemiologist to advise the incident team on outbreak management based on lessons learnt elsewhere across the country.

The directorates of health and social care London region, communicable diseases surveillance centre and the North East London health authority are working extremely closely together to monitor and contain the spread of this virus. No patients and staff at the trust are seriously ill and all are expecting to make a full recovery.