§ Mr. Kevin HughesTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what measures his Department has put in place to counter the shortages of(a) transplant consultants and (b) critical care nurses in the NHS outlined in the Transplant Framework for England, Saving Lives, Valuing Donors. [144891]
§ Ms Rosie WintertonThe NHS Plan set challenging workforce objectives to increase staff numbers significantly and redesign jobs with more staff working differently. The Department has arranged for 11 additional surgical training places to be funded specifically to train transplant surgeons.
Between September 1999 and March 2002, a net increase of 28,740 nurses working in the national health service has meant the NHS Plan target for nurses, 20,000 by 2004, has been achieved early. The NHS has a plan to recruit an additional 35,000 nurses by 2008—a proportion of whom will be working in critical care.
§ Mr. Kevin HughesTo ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what system will be put in place to monitor and evaluate the measurements of progress outlined in the Transplant Framework for England, Saving Lives, Valuing Donors; and what action he will take in the event of primary care trusts failing to make progress;. [144892]
(2) what role he envisages charities and voluntary organisations will play in the implementation of the Transplant Framework for England, Saving Lives, Valuing Donors; [144893]
(3) whether his Department will be providing additional funding for the implementation of the recommendations outlined in the Transplant Framework for England, Saving Lives, Valuing Donors. [144932]
§ Ms Rosie WintertonUK Transplant already closely monitors most aspects of organ donation and transplantation. The information UK Transplant collects and analyses on organ donation and transplant activity is available on its web-site at www.uktransplant.org.uk. In developing their transplant services, it will be for primary care trusts and specialist commissioning teams to take account of local needs and priorities to allocate resources and benchmark their performance against published activity data. As organ transplantation is of proven clinical 625W and cost effectiveness, maximising donation and transplantation rates will be important for both patients and the National Health Service.
We envisage that voluntary organisations will continue to play an important part in research, raising awareness about organ donation, particularly by encouraging people to join the organ donor register and supporting the families of donors and transplant recipients.
The Department has provided around £7 million via UK Transplant since 2001 to boost organ donation through the employment of 35 donor liaison nurses working with staff in critical units to help identify potential donors and how to approach and support relatives; 23 living donor co-ordinators working with families considering live donation and funding 10 non-heartbeating programmes to increase the number of organs from non-heartbeating donors.
§ Mr. Jim CunninghamTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what plans he has to introduce an opt-out scheme for organ donation. [145427]
§ Ms Rosie WintertonGovernment policy on organ donation is one of informed consent, not presumed consent (opt out). The Government reviewed the law on the removal, retention and use of human tissues and organs and tissues during 2003 and the resulting Human Tissue Bill, which was laid before Parliament on 2 December 2003, does not propose to change this policy.