§ The Countess of Marasked Her Majesty's Government:
What has been the total expenditure on socal security benefits, medical treatment, research and compensation borne by the taxpayer on each life lost from (a) vCJD and (b) HIV/AIDS. [HL683]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Warner)Information on social security benefits expenditure on patients who have died from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) or HIV/AIDS is not available in the form requested.
The information requested for HIV treatment is not available centrally. The sums allocated by the Department of Health to the National Health Service for HIV/AIDS treatment and care in England for the past five years for which funds were separately identified are shown in the table.
16WA
Year HIV Treatment Allocation (£Millions) 1997–98 199.7 1998–99 228.2 1999–2000 226.9 2000–01 184.31 2001–02 233.5 1After expenditure of £52.8 million on genitourinary medicine is disaggregated. From April 2002, the special allocation for HIV treament and care was added to National Health Service baseline funding according to the target distribution of HIV across England, and is no longer separately identified.
NHS expenditure on treatment and care for each life lost to vCJD is estimated to be in the range of between £30,000 and £40,000.
Estimated total expenditure from public funds on HIV/AIDS research since 1984 is £300 million.
The Department of Health's expenditure on vCJD research since 1996 is £30.1 million. The main agency through which the Government support biomedical and clinical research is the Medical Research Council (MRC) which receives its grant-in-aid from the office of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The MRC spent a total of £32.5 million on research relevant to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies including vCJD during the period 1996–97 to 2002–03.
A special payment scheme (the Macfarlane Trust) for haemophilia patients infected with HIV/AIDS through blood products was introduced in 1988. Payments from this scheme amount to about £3 million annually.
The vCJD compensation scheme provides for payments to be made in respect of 250 cases up to a maximum of £67.5 million. This includes the Government's agreement to meet the families' request to pay a further £50,000 to every victim or their family in each of the first 250 cases. The legal and administrative costs of running the scheme are met from within the overall sum.