§ Mr. WatsonTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the number of people being prescribed statins in each year to 2010. [165794]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonWinning the War on Heart Disease, the 2004 progress report on the national service framework (NSF) for coronary heart disease, reports that statin prescribing continues to rise by around 30 per cent. a year. Nationally, about 1.8 million people are currently receiving statins.
The Government has made no estimate of numbers of people likely to be prescribed statins in 2010. However, in his 2002 Report Securing Our Future Health: Taking a Long-Term View, Derek Wanless suggested that statins should be prescribed for patients with lower levels of coronary heart disease risk than in the NSF, a 15 per cent. risk over 10 years, as opposed to 30 per cent. in the NSF, and that this would lead to an estimated prescribing cost of £2.1 billion by 2010. The National Institute of Clinical Excellence has been commissioned to produce a technological appraisal of statins and effective prescribing.